Maria Flinder Stierna
Visiting Fellow
I am an economist and a scholar within the humanitarian-development nexus, publishing primarily on the socio-economic 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, as part of the ECOFOOD project. I am funded by the Norwegian Research Council.
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 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), and have completed further coursework on experimental methods with MIT/J-PAL. I have taught quantitative methods at both Oxford (2020-2022) and NMBU (2025).