In essence, her position was that we cannot fully understand or appreciate the practice of Caribbean artists without due consideration of broader factors such as migration, history, identity and, above all diaspora – the scattering of many black people beyond their ancestral homeland of Africa.

"[2] Petrine Archer-Straw was born in Birmingham, England, to Jamaican parents,[1] and was raised during the 1960s in an atmosphere of "... racial pride, and activism".

[4] However, this community work eventually drew the ire of the right-wing British National Front and the family subsequently moved to Jamaica in the early 1970s,[1] where Archer-Straw finished high school and started university.

[5] Archer-Straw published numerous books and catalogues, including Eugene Palmer (October 1993, in collaboration with Jane Norrie), New World Imagery (October 1995), Negrophilia: Avant-Garde Paris and Black Culture in the 1920s (November 2000),[6] Fifty Years, Fifty Artists (May 2001), and Back to Black: Art, Cinema and the Racial Imaginary (June 2005, in collaboration with David A. Bailey, and Richard J.

[7] Additionally, she taught at the Courtauld Institute at the University of London (lecturer, 1994–95), served as the first Head of Art History at the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts in Jamaica (2002–05), and served as a postdoctoral research fellow (2005–06) and visiting lecturer (from 2006) at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.