Adrienne Strong graduated in May 2017 with a joint Ph.D. in sociocultural anthropology from Washington University in St. Louis and the Universiteit van Amsterdam. Adrienne studies maternal mortality in government health facilities in Tanzania and her dissertation is entitled The Maternity Ward as Mirror: Maternal Death, Biobureaucracy, and Institutional Care in the Tanzanian Health Sector.
Starting in fall 2017, Adrienne will be receiving funding from the National Science Foundation’s Postdoctoral Research Fellowship Program for a two-year research postdoc at Columbia University in New York City. She will be based in the Mailman School of Public Health, working with the Averting Maternal Death and Disability (AMDD) group. As part of the postdoc, Adrienne will return to Tanzania in 2018 for a new field project on birth companion programs in health facilities entitled, "Companionship During Childbirth: Power relations and social dynamics in communities and health facilities in Kigoma, Tanzania."