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Marya Hillesland

Department
Gender Equality
Title
Advisor

Marya Hillesland, PhD, is a Gender Advisor at KIT and a feminist economist with nearly two decades of experience in research, technical advisory work, and program management in multilateral institutions. Her work focuses on gender equality, empowerment, intrahousehold dynamics, and transformative change in agricultural and rural contexts, particularly in the Global South.

She has led and contributed to large-scale, mixed-methods research projects on intrahousehold dynamics, social inequalities, food and water insecurity in the context of climate change, and asset and wealth inequalities, collaborating with international and interdisciplinary teams.

Marya has advanced the development of innovative methods for collecting sex-disaggregated and gender-sensitive data, ensuring women’s labour and decision-making are more visible in agricultural and household surveys.

In addition to her advisory and research roles, she has over eight years of university teaching and curriculum development experience in gender and development and feminist economics at the University of Oxford in the UK, and American University, Washington, DC, U.S. She has a doctorate in economics from American University and a master’s focused on political economy and gender.