Maria Flinder Stierna

I am an economist (NHH) and a scholar within the humanitarian-development nexus, publishing primarily on the socioeconomic lives of refugees and those hosting them in East Africa. In my PhD (2023–), I study food systems in refugee-hosting contexts in the same region, and am part of the ECOFOOD project.

My professional background spans, e.g., the University of Oxford, UN agencies, and the Tanzanian government (through ODI). Through interdisciplinary, mixed-methods research and program management responsibilities across Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia, Malawi, and Tanzania, I have witnessed the immense value of research for improved decision-making – and many a remaining data gap. This motivates my academic work, which strives to fill such gaps and inform policies.

I hold a double master’s degree in economics (The Norwegian School of Economics) and international management (CEMS), have completed further coursework on experimental methods with MIT/J-PAL, and have taught quantitative methods at the graduate level at Oxford.