Rate My Professor Rashalee Mitchell

Rashalee Mitchell is an Assistant Lecturer in the Department of Sociology, Psychology and Social Work within the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of the West Indies, Mona Campus. She has been teaching in the department for the past 18 years, offering courses such as Sociology and Development, Sociological Theory, and Globalisation and Development. Currently, she is completing her PhD in Social Policy at the Sir Arthur Lewis Institute of Social and Economic Studies (SALISES), UWI Mona. Her doctoral thesis, supervised by Dr. Leith Dunn, is titled Labour Rights for Female Commercial Sex Workers in Jamaica: Implications for Social Policy and Development. Mitchell is recognized as a developing scholar in Sociology and a social theorist, with her work focusing on the lived and working experiences of vulnerable communities, including sex workers and men who have sex with men.

Mitchell's research examines social protection policies for female sex workers amid Jamaica's criminalisation of sex work, addressing vulnerabilities such as gender-based violence, sexual and financial exploitation, harassment, abuse, sexually transmitted infections, and substance misuse. She advocates for state obligations to provide protections aligned with labour standards, gender equality, human rights, and inclusive development, drawing on historical contexts like enslaved African-Caribbean women's experiences during the Transatlantic Slave Trade. Her contributions include authoring and co-authoring technical reports, such as the National Survey of Attitudes & Perceptions of Jamaicans Towards Same-Sex Relationships for the Jamaica Forum for Lesbians, All-Sexuals and Gays (J-FLAG), and collaborating on the Jamaica Social Investment Fund's evaluation of the National Poverty Eradication Project. She is a member of the Social Policy Cluster at UWI Mona's Faculty of Social Sciences, the Caribbean Sociological Association, and the International Sociological Association. In 2024/25, Mitchell served as the Margaret Anstee Visiting Bye-Fellow at Newnham College, University of Cambridge, delivering a public lecture in June 2025 titled Social Protection for Female Sex Workers in Jamaica: Implications for Social Policy and Development, where she introduced the concept of the citizenship veil to highlight sex workers' marginalisation.