Shakira Maxwell is Assistant Lecturer in the Mona Unit, Centre for Gender and Development Studies, UWI, Mona. She holds a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) from UWI, Mona, and a Diploma in Business Administration from the Institute of Management and Production. A former Elsa Goveia Prize Winner in History, she is currently completing her M.Phil. Degree in History at Mona, examining the construction of femininity through criminality in Jamaica in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

She has been integrally involved in a number of research and outreach programs and projects of the Mona Unit since 1997, including work carried out with UNESCO, and The Jamaica Family Planning Association. Her research interests include, gender-based violence, female criminality, and women and the trade union movement.

Abstract: Reflections in the Looking Glass: Old or New? 21st Century Historical Epistemology and Methodology