About |
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About
Megan Cogburn is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and Criminology & Law and affiliate faculty for the Department of Anthropology and Center for African Studies. She received her PhD in anthropology at the University of Florida and BA from Wheaton College. Her research and teaching span medical anthropology/sociology, gender, and global health, with a regional focus on Tanzania. Her working book project, Becoming Mothers: maternal health in rural Tanzania, takes an ethnographic look at pregnancy and childbirth care in the wake of the push for institutional deliveries in the Global South. With a focus on rural Tanzania, the book explores how ideas about care, its problematic messiness, are wrapped up in the politics of the maternal. It asks, in what new ways are Tanzanian values of motherhood and maternity at stake in the wake of increased global and national pressures to deliver maternal health targets and results? Through detailed, ethnographic storytelling, the book highlights how women, traditional birth attendants (TBAs), and health workers negotiate health policies and practices to protect and strengthen the caring relations and possibilities of becoming mothers.
Dr. Cogburn has been active in development and maternal health research in Tanzania since 2009. Since 2016, she has conducted research on global health policies and practices in Tanzania, including a position as an ethnographer for the Harvard Kennedy School Transparency for Development Project in central Tanzania. There she explored the effects of a transparency and accountability intervention on maternal and neonatal health outcomes, as well as the experiences and roles of TBAs in community development. Dr. Cogburn’s second and current project is a collaborative ethnography exploring pain and palliative care practices in Tanzania. She is continuing to develop an active research agenda on global health and environmental justice, palliative care practices, and the cross-cultural and gendered meanings of pain.
Teaching
Undergraduate Courses
- SYA 4930 Global Health Inequalities
- SYD 3805 Gender and Health
- SYA 4930 Environment and Health
Research
- Critical global health
- Medical anthropology and sociology
- Care practices and theories
- Maternal health governance
- Pain and palliative care
- Gender and Development
- Ethnography
- African studies
Selected Publications
- 2025 Strong, A.E. and M.D. Cogburn. Pain Management. Forthcoming in Annual Review of Anthropology.
- 2025 Cogburn, M.D. Waiting in a Place of Impossible Demands: Surveillance-Care in a Tanzanian Maternity Waiting Home. Forthcoming in Medical Anthropology.
- 2025 Cogburn, M.D. and M.Y. Rafiq. “We Only Escort Women to the Health Facility”: Traditional birth attendants and the performance of indicator-driven care in rural Tanzania. Medical Anthropology Quarterly 2025; e12917. https://doi.org/10.1111/maq.12917
- 2025 Strong, A.E. and M.D. Cogburn. Sociocultural Diversity in Approaching Pain at the End of Life. Forthcoming book chapter in Research Handbook on End of Life Care and Society, Eds. David Clark and Annemarue Samuels.
- 2025 Cogburn, M.D. Traditional Birth Escorts? Reexamining the Work and Needs of Traditional Midwives in Rural Tanzania. Forthcoming book chapter in Traditional Midwives: Cross-Cultural Perspectives, Ed. Robbie Davis Floyd.
- 2022 Williamson, E., B. McCaffrey, A. Premkumar, J. Mishtal, M.D. Cogburn, B. Howes-Mischel, and L. Lowe. “CAR Statement on the Reversal of Roe v. Wade.” Medical Anthropology Quarterly Rapid Response Blog Series, https://medanthroquarterly.org/rapid-response/2022/08/car-statement-on-the-reversal-of-roe-v-wade/.
- 2020 Cogburn, M.D. Homebirth fines and health cards in rural Tanzania: On the push for numbers in maternal health, Social Science & Medicine, Volume 254, 2020, 112508, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2019.112508.
- 2019 Cogburn, M.D., A. Strong, & S. Wood. “Choiceless Choice: Homebirth, Hospital Birth, and Birth Registration in Tanzania” in Birth in 8 Cultures. Eds. R. David-Floyd & M. Cheyney. Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press.
- 2018 Østebø, M.T., M.D. Cogburn, & A.S. Mandani. The silencing of political context in health research in Ethiopia: why it should be a concern, Health Policy and Planning 33(2): 258–270, https://doi.org/10.1093/heapol/czx150
Contact
Megan Cogburn, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Sociology
Office: Turlington Hall, Room 3333
Email: megandcogburn@ufl.edu
PO Box 117330
Department of Sociology and Criminology & Law
University of Florida
Gainesville, FL 32611