Jessica Byron, a citizen of St. Kitts and Nevis, is a Senior Lecturer in International Relations at the University of the West Indies, Mona Campus, Kingston, Jamaica. Her undergraduate and initial postgraduate training was done at UWI, Cave Hill and St. Augustine campuses. She holds a Ph.D. from the Graduate Institute of International Studies, University of Geneva, Switzerland. Before coming to lecture at UWI Mona in 1994, she lectured at the Institute of Social Studies in the Netherlands, before that working as a diplomat for the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States. She has been a visiting lecturer at the Universite Antilles-Guyane in Guadeloupe and at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia in San Andres, Colombia. Her research interests include hemispheric and regional integration, European-Caribbean relations, small states and the multilateral system. She has been a member of the Junta Ejecutiva of CRIES, a Steering Committee member of the Globalization Studies Network, a member of the Caribbean Studies Association, the Latin American Studies Association and the International Studies Association. She is currently one of the convenors of the Building Global Democracy Programme, based at Warwick University.