During a workshop for this special issue, which took place in Copenhagen, Denmark, in August 2024, there was the opportunity to participate in rich conversations with the contributing scholars. As these conversations stretched outside into hotel lobbies and to nearby restaurants and cafés, what was striking was the personal connections that tied authors to their text and island of study. Recent discussions within decolonial island studies have called for centring the voices of scholars who are tied to the region of study themselves, since historically, their stories have been told through the dominant imperial perspective. The background of several of the authors of this issue suggests that, for Caribbean microhistories that are often marginalised, historians and scholars with personal connections to the region are able to offer fresh perspectives and questions, for example, about the people behind informal economies and trade. These are areas that Mark Hauser and Kenneth Kelly have described as “poorly documented but, in practice, fairly ubiquitous”.