Creolization: an autobiographical journey around a concept

Stumbling across the concept of creolization was a matter of chance discovery and, for most of my academic life, intermittent engagement. I noticed it first as a student at the University of the Witwatersrand, next when travelling to West Africa, then subsequently when I met students with Caribbean roots at the University of Birmingham. Switching to the study of migration and spending two years as at the University of the West Indies in Trinidad also influenced me. My sporadic travels to Mauritius provided key insights into Indian Ocean creolization. After reading the work of two Scandinavian scholars I concluded that finding out how, why, when and where creolization manifested itself was a crucial way of understanding how social difference could be surmounted. Fortunately, the award of a professorial fellowship to study the historical and comparative manifestations of creolization enabled me to start (but sadly not finish) this long quest.