Verene A. Shepherd is Professor of Social History at the Mona Campus of the University of the West Indies. Her research interests are Jamaican Economic History in the 18th and 19th Centuries, Migration Studies and Caribbean Women's History; and she has published widely on those themes. Prof. Shepherd is also President of the Association of Caribbean Historians, Member of the Council of the Institute of Jamaica, Chair of the Board of the Jamaica National Heritage Trust and Chair of the Jamaica National Bicentenary Committee.

Her latest book, published in 2007, is I Want to Disturb My Neighbour: Lectures on Slavery, Emancipation and Post-Colonial Jamaica. She is editor of Freedom Delayed and co-author (with Hilary Beckles), of Trading Souls: Europe,s Transatlantic Trade in Africans and Saving Souls: The Struggle to End the Transatlantic Trade in Africans, all published in 2007 to mark the of Bicentenary of the Abolition of the Transatlantic Trade in Africans.