PATRICIA MOHAMMED
Born in Trinidad and Tobago in the West Indies, Patricia Mohammed has lived at various times in the United Kingdom, The Netherlands, Jamaica, Trinidad and the United States.
She is a scholar and filmmaker and currently Professor of Gender and Cultural Studies at the University of the West Indies in Trinidad. She has published widely in both these fields.
Among her books are Gender Negotiations among Indians in Trinidad (Palgrave, 2001) and Imaging the Caribbean: Culture and Visual Translation (Macmillan, 2010).
She is an experimental documentary filmmaker producing and directing fourteen films of which Coolie Pink and Green and City on the Hill are award winning and have been screened internationally.
Professor Mohammed, Emeritus Professor at the University of West Indies, is a key thinker in Caribbean feminist theory and has been involved in feminist activism in the Region since 1979. Full Professor of Gender and Cultural Studies since 2005, she has supervised and taught on gender and development, film and in cultural studies, and devoted decades of service to the University, including the development of educational courses and research programmes, retiring as the First Director of the School for Graduate Studies and Research of the St Augustine campus. She was the First Head of the Mona campus Unit, Institute for Gender and Development Studies, Jamaica and on her relocation to Trinidad in 2002 served variously in this capacity. Her scholarly contributions include over 100 publications in journals, edited books and media, including self-authored books Imaging the Caribbean: Culture and Visual Translation (2010; Macmillan Education), and Gender Negotiations Among Indians in Trinidad: 1917-1947 (2001; Palgrave). Recent works include a collection of essays co-edited with Cheryl Ann Boodram (Connecting the Dots: Life. Work. Balance. Ageing, Ian Randle Publishers, 2020) and Writing Gender in the Caribbean: Selected Essays 1988-2020 (Hansib Publications) published in 2021 which won the Barbara T. Christian Award of the Caribbean Studies Association in the same year.
Professor Mohammed has been lead architect or supported the development of five National Gender Policies in the Caribbean (Cayman Islands, Trinidad and Tobago, The Commonwealth of Dominica, The British Virgin Islands and Guyana), and written extensively and worked on the field in the area of gender and development policy and planning. She is founding editor in 2006 of the Caribbean Review of Gender Studies, the journal of the Institute for Gender and Development Studies, the first open access online journal in the University of the West Indies. Her scholarly contributions include numerous publications in journals, edited books, and media, including self-authored books and increasingly from the 21st century the production of documentary films. She was on the executive council of the Caribbean Studies Association for several years before being elected as President for the year 2008-2009.
Since 1986, Professor Mohammed has also been involved in the production of films and other media on gender and cultural issues. In 2016 she co-authored with Rex Dixon the illustrated book Travels with a Husband, (Hansib Publishers, UK). In 2018, she was recognised as one of the University of the West Indies 70+ Outstanding Women graduates of UWI in its 70th anniversary. In 2019 she was awarded a National Gold Medal from the Government of Trinidad and Tobago for her contribution to the country on Women and Development Issues.
Between 2019 to the present, she has two consultancies and is currently involved in a third deliverable; These are: UNDP/EnGender – “Nationally Determined Contributions Gender mainstreaming roadmap For the Commonwealth of Dominica”, The UWI – “The University Of The West Indies Institutional Strategy for Climate Justice And Resilience” and completing CDB – “A Gender Policy and Operational Strategy for Human Resource Management for Belize Water Services Limited”.