Victoria Leigh Brown, PhD, MA

Postdoctoral Research Associate, Division of Public Health Sciences; Division of Female Pelvic Medicine & Reconstructive Surgery

Education

Ph.D., Binghamton University, State University of New York, 2021

M.A., Binghamton University, State University of New York, 2014

B.A., Indiana University, Indianapolis, 2010

Research

Dr. Brown is an NIH T32 Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Women’s Health with expertise in rural and maternal health outcomes research, global political economy, and social studies of science, technology, and medicine. Her research interests include the social determinants of reproductive, maternal, and pelvic health including: abortion; pregnancy decision-making; menstruation; chronic pelvic pain syndrome (CPPS) in women; childbirth-related injury; pelvic floor disorders (PFDs); interstitial cystitis/bladder pain syndrome (IC/BPS); pelvic organ prolapse (POP); urinary incontinence (UI); and cancer survivorship. Trained in both sociocultural and medical anthropology, she uses qualitative/ethnographic, archival, and community-based participatory methods to analyze underlying socioecological factors influencing disease pathways, the social meaning of illness, and the labor of care in the US, Spain, and other global contexts. 

Her interdisciplinary research examines historical, institutional, and economic processes through which precarity and violence are produced, experienced, and lived. A central theme throughout her work is women’s livelihood and the devaluation of women’s contributions in both productive (waged work) and reproductive (biological and domestic) spheres. For her dissertation research, Dr. Brown carried out extensive, long-term fieldwork examining the social costs of industrial greenhouse agriculture in southeastern Spain, the origin point for one of Europe’s largest counter-seasonal horticultural supply chains. Investigating working-class Spanish and transnational migrant women farmworkers’ experiences with economic precarity, this research identified the way globalized food systems, changing rural physical and political environments, toxic exposure, and austerity impact the bodies, health, and livelihood of rural women workers.

Her more recent work examines women’s health autonomy, specifically the beliefs, behaviors, and decision-making surrounding pregnancy resolution, and labor and delivery methods in underserved rural populations in the US. Taking a broad view of women’s health and well-being, her research also seeks to challenge the conflation of “women’s health” with biological reproduction by examining stigmatized, often-overlooked aspects of chronic illness. She is currently carrying out projects on: rural obstetric/maternity care deserts; the patient-provider encounter; provider “belief” and chronic pelvic pain; women’s reproductive, maternal, and pelvic health care experiences in the rural Missouri “Bootheel”; work and cancer survivorship; body image among women with pelvic floor disorders; and how women manage uro/gynecologic conditions in the workplace. 

Dr. Brown’s research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) NIDDK T32 in Clinical Outcomes Research Training Program in Female Lower Urinary Tract Disorders (2022-); Siteman Cancer Center (2024); the NIH/NICHD (2023-2025); the American Association of University Women (2019-20); the National Collegiate Cancer Foundation (2019); Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture, and Sport (2015-16); the Binghamton University Council (2019-20), Foundation (2019 & 2020), Graduate School (2019 & 2020), and Department of Anthropology (2012-20); and Skidmore College’s Department of International Affairs (2021-22).