Natasha Kay Mortley, PhD
MPhil; B.Sc
Dr. Natasha Mortley is a national of St. Lucia. She holds a B.Sc in Sociology and MPhil in Sociology of Development from the University of the West Indies (UWI), Trinidad and Tobago; and a PhD in Migration and Diaspora Studies from the UWI, Jamaica. In 2006 she was awarded the Commonwealth Spilt Site Award, which allowed her to pursue her doctoral research on “nurse migration and the impacts on Caribbean health care systems,” at the University College London, London, UK. In 2010 she was one of the three top finalists for the Global Development Network Award for Migration and Development.
Dr. Mortley has extensive research experience in the field of Development Studies, having been engaged in a multi-disciplinary approach to key developmental challenges of particular relevance to the Caribbean region. Her research work has focused on: migration & diaspora studies; migration, health & development; medical tourism; diaspora tourism; sports tourism; gender & leadership; gender & entrepreneurship; gender & climate change; and contemporary Caribbean masculinities. Her disciplinary focus over the past fifteen (15) years has been dedicated to integrating a gender perspective to Caribbean social development and policy issues. She therefore considers herself a social developmentalist working in the area of gender and development studies. She is currently Expert Advisor to the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) Secretariat “Migration and Diaspora Programme” and a member of The African-Caribbean Women’s Mobility and Self-fashioning in Post-diaspora Contexts Network with the Southbank University, London UK.
Natasha Mortley is currently a Lecturer and Research Methodologist at the Institute for Gender and Development Studies (IGDS), Regional Coordinating Office at the UWI in Jamaica. She lectures in the graduate programme in the areas of development theory, gender analysis for policy change and research methods. She has a deep passion for research, and particularly building the research capacity of her students as well as empowering them to use sound research for social change within the region. Dr. Mortley believes that a university degree is incomplete if our Caribbean graduates are not empowered and do not know how to use their degree/qualifications for critical thinking, problem solving and impacting social change within their communities.