Recipient of Bridget Jones Travel Award 2020/21 – Amilcar Sanatan

Amílcar Peter Sanatan is a PhD. candidate in Cultural Studies at The University of the West Indies, St. Augustine Campus. His research examines the role of urban development and slum clearance policy in the postcolonial nation state.

His poetry has appeared in BIM Magazine, Caribbean Review of Gender Studies, The Caribbean Writer, Cordite Poetry Review, Gutter, Interviewing the Caribbean, Magma, Moko Magazine, PREE Lit, Sargasso and Sinking City. He has performed spoken word poetry and coordinated open mics in Trinidad and Tobago for over a decade.

Sanatan is an alumnus of the Obsidian Foundation’s Writers’ Retreat (United Kingdom, 2020) and the Cropper Foundation’s Caribbean Creative Writers’ Residential Workshop (Trinidad and Tobago, 2019). In 2020, he was shortlisted for the Johnson and Amoy Achong Prize for Caribbean Writers for creative non-fiction writing.

As an activist, Sanatan has constructed spaces for youth and student leadership in the Caribbean and Americas region, particularly in the areas of the gender and social justice, the creative arts and the political development of youth and students. He continues to advocate for youth mainstreaming and the total transformation of decision-making power to promote the collective aspirations and priorities of youth in all areas of development. Currently, he represents Trinidad and Tobago in the Commonwealth Students’ Association. He is also a member of the Steering Committee of the Global Student Forum. His portfolios of responsibility are Democracy, Human Rights and Solidarity, COVID-19, Caribbean & Americas Constituency and Racial Justice.