We are pleased to announce Professor Rose-Marie Belle Antoine has recently been appointed the Principal of the University of the West Indies’ St. Augustine Campus in Trinidad and Tobago!
Professor Antoine’s UWI journey began in 1989, in the Faculty of Law, Cave-Hill as a Temporary Lecturer who became the inaugural Director and initiator of the successful Master of Law (LLM) programme, The UWI’s first multi-campus, hybrid delivery programme, launched in 2002. She was one of the youngest UWI lecturers to be appointed to the rank of Professor, in 2004, and the first sitting Dean of the Faculty of Law, St. Augustine, serving two terms. In 2021, she was appointed Pro Vice-Chancellor, Graduate Studies and Research. The appointment as Campus Principal, signals yet another pivotal milestone in her 32-year journey at the regional institution.
Professor Antoine established the International Human Rights Clinic, an innovative legal education model twinning academia with activism and practitioners. It has interrogated important causes such as migrants/refugees, indigenous peoples, children’s rights, LGBTI and gender justice. She is currently focused on the injustice meted out to remand prisoners incarcerated for inordinately lengthy periods, including female murder-accused who were victims of domestic violence, under an EU-funded UWI project. Under her leadership, she visited the prisons with students and a historic constitutional motion was filed challenging the constitutionality of the remand phenomenon. Her pro-bono representation includes another landmark case before the Equal Opportunities Tribunal, on mental disability discrimination.