Dr Marianna Leite is an independent researcher and works in the area of International Human Rights Law in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. She has a Ph.D. in Development Studies from Birkbeck, University of London, which employed a Foucauldian discourse analysis to explore the significant shifts in maternal mortality reduction policies over the past decades in Brazil. This research was the extension of work she conducted as a visiting scholar at the International Gender Studies Centre at the University of Oxford.