Dean of the Faculty of Law, Professor Rose-Marie Belle Antoine, holds the Chair as Professor of Labour Law and Offshore Financial Law. Her career has embodied wide and diverse scholarly activity, public service, representation and activism. Dean Antoine’s specialist subject areas are Offshore Financial Law, Labour Law, Anti-Discrimination Law, Public Law (human rights, administrative law and public service law) and Legal Systems/ Comparative Law.

Antoine won the Oxford Commonwealth Scholarship to read for the doctorate in law at Oxford University, won the Cambridge Pegasus Scholarship to pursue the LLM and holds the LL.B. from the UWI. She also earned diplomas and certificates with distinction in international human rights from the International Institute of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France. She was the Distinguished Goodwin Scholar 2004 for Nova SE University in Florida and an adjunct professor at the DePaul, Illinois and Case Western universities, USA, lecturing on International Financial Law. Professor Antoine was former Program Director and founder of the LLM programme in Corporate Law at the Cave Hill campus. Previously, Professor Antoine was employed as a legal officer at the International Labour Office (ILO) in Geneva, Switzerland and worked briefly in London.

Antoine is a Cambridge Fellow and attorney-at law. In 2011, she was elected by OAS states as a Commissioner to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, (IACHR), Washington, where she holds two portfolios as the Rapporteur for Persons of African Descent and against Race Discrimination, and the Rapporteur for Indigenous Peoples. Also, Professor Antoine was the inaugural head of the Economic, Social and Cultural Rights Unit at the IACHR/OAS and in 2015, she was elected President of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

Professor Antoine was appointed the eight honorary member of the international Society for Trust and Estate Practitioners (STEP) in 2012, the only person from the Caribbean. She is a Member of the Advisory Committee of Brookes University, Small Jurisdictions program, Oxford and a Member of the Advisory Board of the International Journal of Legislative Drafting and Law Reform, London. In 2006, Antoine became the first person from the Faculty of Law to win the prestigious UWI Vice-Chancellor’s Regional Award for Excellence in Research. In 2013, she created history by winning the Vice Chancellor’s award for excellence for the second time, this time for PublicService. Antoine has also won international awards for her research and publications, including being honoured by the Commonwealth Foundation UK as an eminent scholar and the UK based Emerald Literati Prize for a published work. In 2008 she was named as one of the outstanding 60 under 60 Academics by the UWI. She has also received Awards from the Guild of Undergraduate Students for her ‘courage and dedication to students’ and for Outstanding Service to the Guild of Students.

Professor Antoine has served as advisor, either as Team Leader or Sole Consultant, to all of the governments of the Commonwealth Caribbean, to governments outside of the region, such as the UK, Venezuela, USA and Canada, and to several international and regional organisations. These include the European Union (EU), OAS, IADB, the World Bank, CARICOM, OECS, UNICEF, ILO, UNIFEM, PanCap and UNDCP. She is the author of well-known Reports on regional issues including Discrimination, Constitutional Reform, Public Service Reform, Police, Children’s’ Rights/ Juvenile Justice, Mutual Legal Assistance, Women’s Rights, Labour Law, Free Movement of Labour , HIV, Financial Law, Health and Anti-Corruption. She has also drafted a number of important statutes on diverse areas of law including on the financial sector, health, public service, education, child justice, labour, financial law, human trafficking and trusts and as ILO consultant, she drafted a Labour Code for Saint Lucia. She has therefore contributed an important share to the practical realisation of the aims of Caribbean legal development and policy by leading various projects and studies. As a result of this consultancy work, she has been described by government sources and others as the “foremost labour law expert in Labour Law in the region” and the “leading” expert in the region in Offshore Financial Law and the law on HIV. She has also been cited on several occasions by the courts of law.

An avid gardener, trained vocal soloist, mainly in classical music, and amateur artist, Dean Antoine has strong interests in cultural and social activities, including writing and singing calypsos and singing folk music. She is proud to be a past pupil of St. Joseph’s Convent, St. Joseph in Trinidad, where she was the Head-Girl and Sports Captain.

Dean Antoine is an award winning author who has written twelve books and several articles in international legal journals on a wide array of subjects. She is published by the prestigious Oxford University Press, with her texts Confidentiality in Offshore Financial Law and the other, Trusts and Related Tax Issues in Offshore Financial Law, described as ‘path-breaking’ and ‘amazing’ by international jurists and into their second editions. These, and her first book, Commonwealth Caribbean Law and Legal Systems, published by Routledge Cavendish, London, are used by universities and practitioners in Europe, the USA, UK and Africa. She is also the co-author and editor of the Unfair Dismissal Digest, ILO, Geneva, Legal Issues in Offshore Finance (Randle Publishers) and HIV and Human Rights, UWI Press. Professor Antoine has contributed chapters to leading texts such as the Legal Systems of the World Encyclopedia, ABC, CLIO, USA, Law and Employment: Lessons from Latin America and the Caribbean, edited by the Nobel Prize Winner in Economics, James Heckman and Human Resource Development and Workplace Governance in the Caribbean, Randle Publishers. She is the author of the well-known CARICOM Harmonization in Labour Law Report 1992, which formed the basis of the Commonwealth Caribbean’s (CARICOM) model labour laws and the blueprint and catalyst for labour law reform in the Commonwealth Caribbean, including reforms on equality of opportunity and industrial relations rights. Antoine is a legal resource person on HIV for organizations such as CAREC, PANCAP and other community groups, initiating the thrust toward anti-discrimination laws. She also served on the UWI HIV Committee (HARP). In 2015, Professor Antoine was appointed Chair of the CARICOM Regional Commission on the Decriminalisation of Marijuana.