Academic background:

I received my first degree from Cambridge University, in History and Geography, in 1955. I married a fellow student, Vin Lumsden, and came to Jamaica in 1956. I taught History at Wolmer's Girls' School from 1957 to 1991. I started work on an MPhil/PhD in 1975, being awarded the PhD by the University of the West Indies, Mona Campus,in 1988; the subject of my thesis was the political career of Dr J Robert Love, the Black Bahamian who had great influence on Jamaica's politics and journalism between 1890 and 1914. This research introduced me to the Jamaica of the period of Crown Colony Government, which has been my main area of research ever since.

I taught in the History Department at Mona from 1980 to 1990 in a part-time and temporary capacity, and from 1991 to 2004 as a full-time lecturer. 

I was President of the Jamaican Historical Society for three years in the mid-1990s, having edited the Society's Bulletin for most of the 1980s.

Joy Lumsden