Expertise

Dr. Ready is an anthropologist and human rights activist who has worked on issues of gender and sexuality in Central America.

Profile

Dr. Ready, known as "Kelley," works with SID students to find practicum and use them to craft a quality paper that satisfies the requirements of the program. She teaches classes on gender, sexuality, reproductive rights, culture, power and sustainable development. As an anthropologist, the diversity of the SID student body enables her to continue to learn about new cultures and to explore ways to reconcile a commitment to women's rights with a respect for cultural traditions.

Dr. Ready is also the coordinator of a lively Gender Working Group (GWG), made up of students, faculty and staff, which works to incorporate a gender perspective into the Heller Curriculum and to raise gender issues at the University. Each year the GWG participates in the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence Campaign, celebrates International Women's Day and sponsors informal "conversations" which explore issues such as trafficking. She is also a member of the Heller Immigration Working Group.

Dr. Ready's goal is to encourage her students to take a critical view of development and to ask questions about who benefits from the projects, programs and other interventions promoted by development institutions and non-governmental organizations. Because of her background as a participant in and researcher of social movements, particularly women's movements, she continues to study how civil society can promote social justice. Most recently her work has focused on the situation of women in the Democratic Republic of Congo where conflict has created the conditions in which hundred of thousands of women have been brutally raped. A bill she helped introduce on Congo conflict minerals is making its way through the Massachusetts legislature.