Directory of Research and Expertise

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Research Summary and Profile

Research interests:

Contemporary History, Gender studies, Globalization & Development, History, Modern History , Regional history, Social Sciences

Regions:

Caribbean, South America

Summary of research interests and expertise:

Professor Jean Stubbs is an Associate Fellow of the Centre for Latin American and Caribbean Studies of the Institute of Languages, Cultures and Societies, in the University of London’s School of Advanced Study. She is Caribbean and Latin American Liaison for the Commodities of Empire British Academy Research Project, which she co-founded in 2007, and is also a founder member of the Commodity Frontiers Initiative; member of the Academy of History of Cuba; past president of the regional Caribbean Studies Association and UK Society for Caribbean Studies; and Professor Emerita of London Metropolitan University, where she directed the Caribbean Studies Centre (2002-2009). She has researched widely on Cuba, her specialist interests spanning tobacco, labour, gender, race, nation and migration. Her foundational work on tobacco, and especially the Havana cigar, led her to trace cultivation, trade, manufacture, labour and consumption on a global scale, linking commodity and migration histories spanning the late-eighteenth to the twenty-first centuries, drawing on sociological, anthropological and agronomic approaches, as well as archival and oral history. She is currently working on two books: Cuban Mobilities in an Era of Nation Branding (co-author, Catherine Krull, University of Victoria, Canada) and a monograph provisionally titled The Havana Cigar Universe: Transnational Migration and Commodity Production.

Languages:

	Spoken	Written
French	Intermediate	-
Spanish	Fluent	Fluent
Portuguese	Intermediate	-

Publication Details

Related publications/articles:

Date	Details
01-Dec-2024	Tobacco in Global Perspective: Trade, Knowledge and Labour, 1780-1960 Edited Book Co-editors Alexander van Wickeren & William Gervse Clarence-Smith, Palgrave macmillan
15-Oct-2024	Tobacco Counterpoints: Cuba and the Global Habano Edited Book Amaurea Press
26-Feb-2024	The Oxford Handbook of Commodity History Edited Book Co-editors Jonathan Curry-Machado, William Gervase Clarence-Smith & Jelmer Vos, Oxford University Press
30-Jun-2023	Tobacco on the Periphery: A Case Study in Cuban Labour History, l860 1958 Monographs Amaurea Press
30-Jun-2023	Tabaco en la periferia: El complejo agro-industrial cubano y su movimiento obrero 1860-1959 Monographs Amaurea Press
01-Oct-2022	Revisiting Caribbean Labour: The Challenges of Connie's Legacy Chapters In David Sutton & Deborah A. Thomas, eds..Changing Continuities and the Scholar-Activist Anthropology of Constance R, Sutton, Ian Randle
10-Jun-2021	'Cuba Between Hurricanes': Commodity Frontiers and Environmental Change Journal articles Diálogos Revista Electrónica de Historia
15-Dec-2020	Los monopolios ibéricos del tabaco (ss.XVI-XIX Journal articles Co-editors Santiago de Luxán & Joao Figueroa-Rego, Special Issue of Revista Millars
28-Apr-2020	Afro-Cuban Voices: On Race and Identity in Contemporary Cuba Edited Book Co-editor Pedro Pérez Sarduy, University Press of Florida
01-May-2019	Cuba-Canaries Havana Cigar Connections: A Hemispheric, Transatlantic and Global Historyhttps://www.cepc.gob.es/publicaciones/monografias/grandes-vicios-grandes-ingresos-el-monopolio-del-tabaco-en-los-imperios-ibericos-siglos-xvii-xx-6 Chapters In Santiago de Luxán, Joao Figueiroa-Rego & Vicent Sanz, eds,, Grandes vicios, grandes ingresos, Centro de Estudios Políticos y Constitucionales, Madrid
11-Jan-2019	Beyond Iberian Atlantic Spaces: Trans-imperial and Trans-Territorial Entanglements in Havana Cigar History (1756-1924) Chapters In Santiago de Luxán & Joao Figueiroa-Rego, eds, El tabaco y la esclavitud en la rearticulación imperial ibérica/O trabalho e a esclavagem na rearticulacao imperial ibérica, s.XVI-XX, CIDEHUS, Evora.
26-Oct-2018	Crossing Borders: Knowledge Networks, Ideas and Values among Cubans in Canada and Western Europe Co-author Catherine Krull, in Anja Bandau, Anne Brüske, and Natasha Uekmann, eds. Reshaping (G)local Dynamics of the Caribbean: Relaciones y Desconexiones, Relations et Déconnexions, Relations and Disconnection,  Leibnitz Universitat Hanover
17-Mar-2018	Decentering cubanidad: Commodification, Cosmopolitanism and Diasporic Engagement Shaping the Cuban Migration to Post-1989 Western Europe Chapters Co-author Catherine Krull, in Antoni Kapcia, ed. Rethinking Past and Present in Cuba: Essays in Memory of Alistair Hennessy, University of London
20-Feb-2018	Not Miami’: Post-1989 Cuban Diasporas in Toronto and Montreal Chapters Co-author Catherine Krull, in Luis René Fernández Tabío, Cynthia Wright, & Lana Wylie, eds. Other Diplomacies, Other Ties: Canada and Cuba in the Shadow of the US, University of Toronto

Research Projects & Supervisions

Research projects:

Details
Commodities of Empire Institute of Latin American Studies Project period: 04-Jan-2007 - 30-Mar-2030 Research interests: Colonies & Colonization, emigration & immigration, Contemporary History, Globalization & Development, History, Modern History , Regional history, Social Sciences
Commodities of Empire Commodities of Empire is a British Academy Research Project, currently based at the University of Birmingham’s Centre for Modern and Contemporary History, in collaboration with the University of London’s Centre for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CLACS). The mutually reinforcing relationship between ‘commodities’ and ’empires’ has long been recognised. Over the last six centuries the quest for profits has driven imperial expansion, with the global trade in commodities fuelling the ongoing industrial revolution. These ‘commodities of empire’, which became transnationally mobilised in ever larger quantities, included foodstuffs (e.g. wheat, rice, bananas); industrial crops (e.g. cotton, rubber, linseed and palm oils); stimulants (e.g. sugar, tea, coffee, cocoa, tobacco, opium); and ores (e.g. tin, copper, gold, diamonds). Their expanded production and global movements brought vast spatial, social, economic and cultural changes to both metropoles and colonies. In the Commodities of Empire project, we explore the networks through which particular commodities circulated both within and in the spaces between empires, with particular attention to local processes originating in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, and Latin America, which significantly influenced the outcome of the encounter between the world economy and regional societies. We adopt a comparative approach and explore the experiences of peoples subjected to different imperial hegemonies.

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