Holger Henke grew up in Viersen and since 1972 in Haar (Munich). He attended the Geschwister-Scholl-Institute for Political Science at the University of Munich, where he obtained a Magister Artium (Political Science, Modern German Literature, and Communication Sciences) in 1987. He subsequently emigrated and lived for seven years in Jamaica. In 1996 he earned a Ph.D. in Government at the University of the West Indies (Mona) with a dissertation about the foreign relations of that country between 1972 und 1989. Since 1995 he lives near New York City.

Henke studies international relations (Caribbean, Europe, USA, und Asia), migration, political culture and development (political economy). He has published six books and numerous scholarly articles. Henke is the editor of the peer-reviewed journal Wadabagei: A Journal of the Caribbean and its Diasporas. He currently serves as the President of the Caribbean Studies Association (2010-2011). Henke is also a Senior Fellow of the Caribbean Research Center at Medgar Evers College (City University of New York), where he previously had worked as assistant director, and a Senior Research Fellow of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs in Washington (D.C.). In August 2010, he received the honorary citizenship of Jamaica.

• The End of the “Asian Model”?. (ed., with Ian Boxill), John Benjamins: Amsterdam & Philadelphia 2000.
• Between Self-Determination and Dependency: Jamaica’s Foreign Relations, 1972-1989. Kingston: University of the West Indies Press 2000.
• The West Indian Americans. Westport (CT): Greenwood Press 2001
• Modern Political Culture in the Caribbean. (ed., with Fred Reno), Kingston: University of the West Indies Press 2003.
• Crossing Over. Comparing Recent Migration in the United States and Europe, (ed.), Lanham (MD): Lexington Books 2005.
• Constructing Vernacular Culture in the Trans-Caribbean, (ed., with Karl-Heinz Magister), Lanham (MD): Lexington Books 2008.

Holger Henke