Sir Hilary McDonald Beckles is Pro-Vice Chancellor of the University of West Indies (UWI) and Principal of the UWI Cave Hill Campus. He received his higher education in the United Kingdom and graduated with a BA (Hons) degree in Economic History from Hull University in 1976 and a PhD from the same university in 1980. He has served the University Cave Hill Campus as Head of the History Department and Dean of the Faculty of Humanities.
He is an internationally reputed historian and serves on the editorial boards of several academic journals, including the Journal of Caribbean History, and an international editor for the Journal of American History. He served for five years as a member of the Cultural Committee of Prince Claus of the Netherlands. He is also the Chair, Board of Directors of the University of the West Indies Press. He is a member of the International Task Force for the UNESCO Slave Route Project and is principal consultant for resource material in the schools programme. He is also Consultant for the UNESCO Cities for Peace Global Programme, and an advisor to the UN World Culture Report.
In 2001, he led the Barbados national delegation to the UN Conference on Race in Durban, South Africa. In recent years, he has lectured on the challenges facing higher education thinking and planning in the Caribbean. He is co-author of "The Brain Train: Quality Higher Education and Caribbean Development", 2002. He also chaired the UWI Task Force on the "Globalisation and Liberalisation of Higher Education".