Excerpt from cbc.ca
In September 1992, representatives of a dozen or so countries and dependent territories met in Canada’s smallest province to talk about the one thing they all had in common: They all came from islands.
The hosts, an assorted group of scholars from the then-still-new University of Prince Edward Island Institute of Island Studies, couldn’t have possibly foreseen that between dry academic discussions on issues such as Icelandic sovereignty, they were starting a movement.
“We were both setting up institutes of island studies for similar reasons at our respective universities. And very soon of course, within a few years, we found out about each other,” said Godfrey Baldacchino, a sociology professor at the University of Malta.
“I was invited, and I haven’t looked back.”
Baldacchino, who also teaches at UPEI, is one of the leading scholars in island studies, an academic field that during that conference first got its moment in the sun.
Islands have captured imaginations since the times of Homer, and scholars have rigorously studied their particularities starting with at least Darwin (think Island gigantism). But island studies — also known as “nissology” — didn’t develop into its own thing until the mid-1980s.
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