Professor Paloma Mohamed Martin, PhD, the first woman to lead the University of Guyana, and, by regional accounts, the first woman appointed to a vice-chancellorship anywhere in the Anglophone Caribbean, will publish her first memoir, A Brave and Beautiful Thing, in October 2026, as she brings to a close seven years at the head of the country’s national university.

Subtitled A First Memoir of the First Female Vice-Chancellor of the University of Guyana, the book arrives at a hinge moment in the country’s academic history. Its release coincides with the close of a tenure that steered the University through the COVID-19 pandemic, a period of acute institutional strain, and one of the most ambitious phases of transformation in its history.

“I never set out to lead, and for a long time I resisted it,” said Professor Mohamed Martin. “This book is my attempt to tell the truth about what it asks of a woman to carry an institution, and a country’s hopes, through years when almost nothing was certain.”