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Room 5419 The Graduate Center 365 Fifth Avenue New York, New York 10016 (212) 817-8438 clacls@gc.cuny.edu |
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George Priestley graduated from Brooklyn College; studied in Lisbon and received Masters and Ph.D. degrees from Columbia University. He currently serves as Director of Latin American Area Studies at Queens College, and teaches in the Political Science Department at that institution. He has also taught as an adjunct Professor in the Department of Pan-African Studies at Barnard College/Columbia University. Besides these teaching duties, he serves on a number of editorial boards, including NACLA (North American Report on the Americas) and Tareas (one of Panama's leading social science journal). He is also a contributing editor of Wadabagei, a Journal of Caribbean Studies and its Diaspora. George Priestley is also a senior researcher at the Centro de Estudios Latinoamericanos, Justo Arosemena (CELA) in Panama City, Republic of Panama.
Priestley's research interest includes studies in Comparative Politics, Central American Politics, Comparative Racial Formation, and Transnational Identities in the Black Diaspora; He is the author or co-author of several books and monographs and dozens of articles. Some of his better known publications are Ethnicity and Class in Central America; Military Government and Popular Participation in Panama: The Torrijos Regime, 1968-1975, and Panama's Political Crisis: Is There a Democratic Alternative. His current research project involves the Transnational Identities of Panamanians of West Indian descent, and a political biography of George Washington Westerman, journalist, diplomat and defender of minority rights in Panama. Professor Priestley has been the recipient of numerous awards, including a Gulbenkian Fellowship, a Ford Diversity Initiative Grant, a Mellon Foundation Award, and numerous grants from PSC-CUNY. Professor Priestley has served as Executive Director of the City University of New York Association of Caribbean Studies, Program Chair of the 24th Conference of the Caribbean Studies Association-CSA (May 1999 at Hotel Panama, Panama City), and is currently a member of the Executive Council of CSA. He was the President of the World University Service (United States National Committee) during the 1980s. Outside of academia he has held numerous positions including that of President of the Third Congress of Black Panamanians, Co-Coordinator of Panama's National Association against Apartheid, and Vice-President of the Third Congress of Black Culture of the Americas.