Cultural Anthropology
Rachel earned a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology and Anthropology from Luther College in 2013 and a Master of Social Work degree (MSW – with a concentration in Health, Aging, and Disability) from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2016. She is currently a fifth-year dissertator in Cultural and Medical Anthropology with a minor in African Cultural Studies. Rachel’s research interests include critical medical anthropology and women’s reproductive health in East Africa. Specifically, she studies menstruation and menstrual care among Maasai of northern Tanzania. Rachel’s intellectual curiosities lie at the intersection of feminist ethnography, women’s social organizing, and decolonial praxis. Rachel earned a Fulbright-Hays DDRA grant to fund her dissertation research. She is currently in Tanzania, and she will complete her fieldwork in February 2023.
Prior to matriculating into this program, Rachel worked with several organizations through her MSW including AmeriCorps, International Red Cross, University of Wisconsin Organ and Tissue Donation, and University of Colorado-Denver Division of Pulmonary Sciences and Critical Care Medicine. She has worked on four National Institutes of Health funded clinical trials and helped develop a Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy intervention for critical care nurses with Burnout Syndrome as well as a Motivational Interviewing intervention for critically ill people with Alcohol Use Disorder. Rachel is a recipient of four Foreign Language Area Studies Fellowships (i.e., AY 2019-2020, Summer 2020, AY 2020-2021, and Summer 2021) as well as a John T. Hitchcock Prize in Anthropology (i.e., AY 2019-2020).