This month's desk

Research rarely begins with answers. It begins with questions, unexpected connections and conversations across disciplines.

Each month, Dr Dinah Hippolyte shares a curated selection of the books, papers, reports and ideas currently shaping the Saltwater Insights research programme.

Desk Spotlight

Sylvia Wynter: On Being Human as Praxis book cover

Edited by Katherine McKittrick, Duke University Press, 2015.

"To give humanness a different future."— Sylvia Wynter

Why it matters

Wynter's work continues to challenge some of the deepest assumptions underpinning development, governance and knowledge production. Rather than treating existing understandings of the human as universal, she asks how they came to be constructed, whose experiences they privilege, and what alternative futures become possible when those assumptions are made visible.

This perspective runs through much of my work, including our essay: What Noami Osaka Made Visible, where Wynter's critique of the universal helps explain how particular cultural norms come to appear neutral, natural and therefore beyond question.

As I continue developing Generative Fit, Wynter reminds me that effective development is not only about designing better policies. It also requires questioning the inherited ideas about humanity, progress and legitimacy on which those policies are built.

Her work reinforces a central proposition of my research: that the frameworks we use to understand the world shape the futures we are able to imagine.

Research Theme Connections: Recognition & Power, Development theory, Knowledge production.

How Britain Underdeveloped the Caribbean. A Reparation Response book cover

By Hilary McD Beckles, The University of the West Indies Press, 2015.

Why it matters

Beckles rejects the idea that Caribbean underdevelopment is the product of internal weakness or policy failure. Instead, he demonstrates how the region's economic structures were deliberately designed to extract wealth, and how many of those inequalities persisted long after formal independence.

“The modern Caribbean economy was invented, structured and managed by European states for one purpose: to achieve maximum wealth extraction.”

— Hilary McD. Beckles

His work reframes development as a historical and political question, rather than simply an economic one.

Beyond its historical account, Beckles raises an enduring policy question: what does development look like when the institutions, economies and governance structures inherited from colonialism continue to shape the present? His work reminds us that development cannot be understood apart from these historical legacies.

Beckles reinforces the importance of beginning with those realities, rather than assuming development starts from a blank slate.

Research Theme Connections: Development theory, Institutions

Current Papers

Epistemic silences, subversive politics: post-disaster economic assessments as technologies of persistent coloniality and route to an emancipatory climate justice agenda in the Caribbean.

Keston Perry · Climate and Development (2024)

Why it caught my attention

This paper asks a deceptively simple question: what counts when we measure the impacts of climate disasters? It argues that the assessments used to calculate loss and damage in the Caribbean often prioritise economic losses while overlooking histories of colonialism, community knowledge, cultural institutions and the everyday practices that help people recover.

What interests me most is its challenge to the assumption that development tools are neutral. It raises important questions about whose knowledge shapes policy, whose experiences are counted, and what becomes invisible when recovery is measured primarily through economic indicators. These are questions that sit at the heart of my own work on Generative Fit, which explores whether development frameworks are genuinely aligned with the historical, political, institutional and lived realities of the societies they are intended to serve.

This month's desk

Research rarely begins with answers. It begins with questions, unexpected connections and conversations across disciplines.

Desk Spotlight

Edited by Katherine McKittrick, Duke University Press, 2015.

By Hilary McD Beckles, The University of the West Indies Press, 2015.

Why it matters

​

Beckles rejects the idea that Caribbean underdevelopment is the product of internal weakness or policy failure. Instead, he demonstrates how the region's economic structures were deliberately designed to extract wealth, and how many of those inequalities persisted long after formal independence.

“The modern Caribbean economy was invented, structured and managed by European states for one purpose: to achieve maximum wealth extraction.”

— Hilary McD. Beckles

His work reframes development as a historical and political question, rather than simply an economic one.

Beckles reinforces the importance of beginning with those realities, rather than assuming development starts from a blank slate. Research Theme Connections: Development theory, Institutions

Current Papers

Epistemic silences, subversive politics: post-disaster economic assessments as technologies of persistent coloniality and route to an emancipatory climate justice agenda in the Caribbean.

​

Beckles reinforces the importance of beginning with those realities, rather than assuming development starts from a blank slate.

Research Theme Connections: Development theory, Institutions