2010 will mark 50 years since the “Report on The Rastafari Movement in Kingston, Jamaica” was first published by the then University College of the West Indies. This Report authored by M.G. Smith, Roy Augier and Rex Nettleford validated the University’s sense of its social responsibility and remains one of its most successful monographs, having gone through eight reproductions without change in form or content, on its way to becoming a most highly referenced document on the Movement.

2010 also marks the 80th anniversary of the Rastafari Movement itself, which has grown from a few visionaries struck by the coronation of the Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie I in November 1930, into a vital force in reconstructing and elevating the African Presence in the Western landscape.

In recognition of these two anniversaries and on the birthday of the Pan-African champion and nation’s first National Hero, the Honourable Marcus Mosiah Garvey, the Institute of Caribbean Studies announces the inaugural Rastafari Studies Conference to be held at the Mona Campus of the University of the West Indies August 17 - 20, 2010, under the Chairmanship of Emeritus Professor Sir Roy Augier.