Locksley Edmondson, Cornell University professor of political science and the recent director of the university's Africana Studies and Research Center, has been elected president of the Caribbean Studies Association, the world's leading scholarly organization on the Caribbean, with more than 1,000 members. He began his one-year term as president July 1.

The Puerto Rico--based organization was established in 1975 to bring together scholars from the Caribbean nations and Caribbean specialists from other nations. Since its founding, one of the association's major functions has been organizing an annual conference in the region. In May 1997, that conference will be held in Colombia for the first time.

"Colombia is reaching out for a closer Caribbean identity," Edmondson said. "They already have a rich Caribbean coastal culture, but they also want to expand Caribbean political and economic contacts."

Edmondson, who previously served as the association's vice president and on its executive council, said his priorities will include strengthening ties among the islands of the Caribbean and the nations of Central and South America; among the Haitian scholarly community and the broader Caribbean scholarly community; and among the scholarly organizations in the communities of the Caribbean Diaspora in North America, Europe and elsewhere.

Edmondson, who was raised in Jamaica, has taught at such distant campuses as the University of Waterloo in Canada, Makerere University in Uganda and the University of the West Indies in Jamaica, where he was dean of social sciences from 1976 to 1980. He taught in Cornell's Department of Government from 1970 to 1973 and returned to the university in 1983 to serve in its Africana Studies and Research Center, one of the premier programs of its kind in the nation. He was the center's director from 1991 to 1996; in July the center's first director, Professor James E. Turner, returned to the post.

A specialist in politics and international relations concerning Africa and the Caribbean, Edmondson has served as president of the African Studies Association of the West Indies, on the bureau of the International Congress of African Studies and on the boards of the African Heritage Studies Association and the Trans-Africa Forum. He earned his undergraduate degree at the University of Birmingham in England and his master's and doctoral degrees at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario.