Dr Adrienne Milner
Education Academic -Senior Lecturer in Sport, Health and Exercise Sciences

Summary

Dr Adrienne Milner is a Senior Lecturer (Education) in the Division of Sport, Health and Exercise Sciences, Department of Life Sciences and a member of the Welfare, Health and Well-being theme, Institute of Environment, Health and Societies. Dr Milner’s research addresses issues of health equity in terms of race and ethnicity and sex and gender in sports, education, and political contexts. Specifically, she studies disparities in access to athletic participation and analyses the costs and benefits of sport participation for individuals with complex and diverse identities. 

Dr Milner is co-author with Prof Jomills Henry Braddock II of the monograph, Sex Segregation in Sports: Why Separate Is Not Equal, which uses a socio-legal approach to compare racial and sexual policy and argue that sex segregation in sport should be eliminated. Specifically, Milner and Braddock II focus on why large-scale sex integration in sport would result in a number of social benefits, such as increased safety and access to athletic participation and decreased prevalence of violence against women, eating disorders, and use of performance-enhancing substances. She is also co-editor with Prof Braddock of the collection, Women in Sports: Breaking Barriers, Facing Obstacles.

Dr Milner served as principal investigator (PI) on two grants that assessed how demographic differences are related to physical activity and health outcomes. With Dr Elizabeth Baker, she designed and implemented the world's first walking bus program for adults and completed a pilot study assessing how the intervention was associated with weight loss for obese and overweight Birmingham, AL residents, and how race, sex, and socioeconomic status may have influenced results. For this research, she received two U.S. national awards: the American Heart Association’s Workplace Innovation Award (gold) and the NASPA (Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education) excellence award (silver).

Dr Milner graduated from Emory University with a double major in Sociology and Women's Studies and went on to complete her MA and PhD in Sociology at the University of Miami. Prior to her move to Brunel, she was a Teaching Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and Lecturer in Social Determinants of Health at Queen Mary University of London.