Zaira Simone-Thompson is an assistant professor in the African American Studies department. As a geographer, her work and teaching centers on contemporary experiences and representations of slavery, colonialism and uneven development in the Caribbean. Her past work examined the symbolic and material forces of reparative claims in Barbados—a small  but politically large landscape. Her current book project explores the multiplicity of Afro-Caribbean and Indo-Caribbean visions of recovery, wholeness, and justice relating to the geographic realities of chattel slavery, indentureship and colonialism.

 Zaira Simone-Thompson is also the co-coordinator of the Caribbean Studies Minor here at Wesleyan University. 

 Zaira embraces teaching as a form of active engagement and encourages students to approach the course material as a political “toolbox” and more importantly to show up as their most authentic selves.