David Nicholls Memorial Annual Lecture, 2017: Professor Andrew Leak, 'New' Governors of the Dew

Professor Andrew Leak, University College London, delivered the 18th David Nicholls Memorial Annual Lecture on 'New' Governors of the Dew at Regent's Park College, Oxford. His presentation addressed literary and political narratives of rural development, poverty and peasant society in Haiti. Professor Leak further explored the contemporary challenges facing Haitian peasantry from the perspective of Jacques Roumain’s classic novel, Gouverneurs de la rosée (1944), and the Haitian political analyses of David Nicholls.
The David Nicholls Memorial Trust www.dnmt.org.uk was founded in 1997 to commemorate David's life and work following his death in 1996. David Nicholls was a rare phenomenon in today's world of professional pigeon-holing: a polymath and writer of important and influential academic works who never held a mainstream academic post; a theologian whom the Church of England found it difficult to accommodate. The Trust has enabled David's extensive book collection to be kept together in The David Nicholls Memorial Library, which is housed at Regent's Park College, Oxford.
The Trust also funds:
New accessions in Caribbean Studies, so that the Library is kept up-to-date.
Research Awards to enable students to visit Oxford to use the David Nicholls Memorial Library or to complete original research in the Caribbean.
Tche annual David Nicholls Memorial Lecture, held in the second week of October each year, which continues David's focus on providing new and radical perspectives on contemporary issues concerning Caribbean Studies, Political Science and Theology.