Birth Models That Work

CONTRIBUTORS

463 contributors EDITORS Robbie Davis-Floyd, PhD, senior research fellow, Department of Anthropology , University of Texas–Austin, and Fellow of the Society for Applied Anthropology, is a medical anthropologist specializing in the anthropology of reproduction. An international speaker and researcher, she is author of over eighty articles and of Birth as an American Rite of Passage (1992, 2004); co-author of From Doctor to Healer: The Transformative Journey (1998); and co-editor of eight collections, including Childbirth and Authoritative Knowledge: Cross-Cultural Perspectives (1997); Cyborg Babies: From Techno-Sex to Techno-Tots (1998); and Mainstreaming Midwives: The Politics of Change (2006). Her research on global trends and transformations in childbirth, obstetrics, and midwifery is ongoing. She speaks regularly at universities and conferences around the world. She currently serves as senior advisor to the Council on Anthropology and Reproduction and editor for the International MotherBaby Childbirth Initiative. E-mail: davis-floyd@mail.utexas.edu. Lesley Barclay, RM, PhD, is a midwife who has worked as a clinician, midwife educator, and researcher. She serves as foundation director and professor at the Centre for Family Health and Midwifery at the University of Technology–Sydney. Her work focuses on improving knowledge, services, and policy supporting the health and parenting experiences of women and their families. She does this as a researcher and through educating others, as well as through policy leadership and systems improvement . Her research has been supported by twenty-eight grants in the past fifteen years, many from prestigious granting bodies. Lesley also provides research-oriented consultancies for national and international 464 contributors governments; she leads “development” projects for the World Health Organization, AusAID, and the World Bank. With her students and others , she has published twenty-five refereed journal articles and fourteen major reports for governments in the past five years and has co-authored a number of books, including Samoan Nursing: The Story of Women Developing a Profession (1998); Constructing Fatherhood: Discourses and Experiences (1997); and Midwifery: Trends and Practices in Australia (1996). Her most recent co-authored book is Midwives’ Tales: Stories of Social and Professional Birthing in Samoa (2005). E-mail: lesley.barclay@cdu.edu.au. Betty-Anne Daviss, RM, MA, BJ, is a midwife who has worked on five continents in over thirty years. As adjunct professor at the Pauline Jewett Institute of Women’s Studies, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada, she teaches social movement theory and midwifery history. She was involved with midwifery legislation in Canada, particularly in Quebec and Ontario, after three years of work as a midwife in Alabama, giving her a unique Canadian and American perspective. Her ethnographic work is mixed with strategizing for change among the Inuit in northern Canada, the traditional midwives in Guatemala and Afghanistan, and the Eastern European midwives, particularly in Hungary. Among her epidemiologic investigations, she considers the largest prospective home birth study ever to be published (British Medical Journal 2005) one of her proudest achievements . She is chair of the International Bureau of the Canadian Association of Midwives and was the first midwife to be hired by the International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics, serving as project manager for its Safe Motherhood Program. E-mail: betty-anne@rogers.com. Jan Tritten is founder and editor-in-chief of Midwifery Today magazine and The BirthKit newsletter, author of over one hundred articles and editorials , and co-editor of Getting an Education: Paths to Becoming a Midwife (1998, 2003). She became a home birth midwife twenty-seven years ago. She hosts two to three Midwifery Today conferences per year in cities around the world, maintains an international networking midwifery database, gives frequent talks, and is internationally renowned as a unifying figure in midwifery and a key organizer of the global development of midwifery as both social movement and profession. She is founder of the International Alliance of Midwives (IAM), an online organization for networking and support that maintains a list of country contacts for fifty-six different countries with links to birth websites in those countries. The quarterly electronic newsletter for this organization can be accessed at www.midwiferytoday.com/iam. Jan has organized forty-five Midwifery Today conferences in over twelve different countries from 1992 through the present, many on international issues and all with international classes. E-mail: jan@midwiferytoday.com. contributors 465 CONTRIBUTORS Isa Paula Hamouche Abreu, MD, specializes in public health and Chinese traditional medicine. From 2000 to 2007 she was responsible for the...