Biography
Madina Agénor
What do you do? I am an interdisciplinary scholar with a background in social epidemiology, sociomedical sciences, and gender studies and an Associate Professor in the Department of Behavioral and Social Sciences at the Brown University School of Public Health. My research uses social science- and humanities-based approaches to elucidate how structural and social inequities, health care access and experiences, and laws and policies shape health inequities at the intersection of race, ethnicity, social class, gender, and sexuality.
How did the GNSS concentration shape your career? Completing the GNSS concentration as an undergraduate student at Brown prepared me to investigate issues of health and well-being from a critical, interdisciplinary, and intersectional perspective. In particular, it has allowed me to draw on critical theories and methodologies from the social sciences and humanities to elucidate the historical and social production of health inequities in relation to gender, sexuality, racism, and other systems of power across time and space. As a result of my background in GNSS, my work facilitates understandings of health inequities that go beyond individual-level biological, medical, and psychological factors and instead implicate the structures, systems, and institutions that drive poor health outcomes and premature death in marginalized communities. Of note, by introducing me to Black feminisms and intersectionality, the GNSS concentration equipped me to attend, in both my research and teaching, to how Black women and communities, LGBTQ+ people of color, and other marginalized groups have and continue to resist systems and institutions that create higher burdens of death, disease, and illness in their communities through collective action that builds a more equitable world.