Dr Marianne Kjellén, UNDP

Dr Marianne Kjellén, Senior Water Advisor, works with the Water & Ocean Governance Programme within the Bureau for Policy and Programme Support at the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). She oversees knowledge management and capacity development work, including the UNDP Water Governance Facility (WGF) at the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI) and the International Network for Capacity Development in Sustainable Water Management (Cap-Net UNDP).

Marianne has over twenty years’ experience of water and development work. Prior to joining the UNDP in August-2016, she worked with SIWI; directing the WGF and the Water Governance team and theme work at SIWI. She also managed a major Knowledge Management initiative to analyse, document and disseminate experience from programmes for Democratic and Economic Governance of water and sanitation, supported by the Millennium Development Goals Achievement Fund (MDG-F), and research on the socio-cultural challenges in sanitation and water supply for ethnic minorities, particularly indigenous peoples.

Previous experience also includes many years with the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI); serving as social and gender expert in the Knowledge Management Team of the Ecological Sanitation Research Programme and before that as coordinator of research on urban environments. As lecturer at Stockholm University, Marianne Kjellén has developed and run courses on Environment & Urbanization, Medical Geography and Economic Geography. Her PhD thesis in Human Geography made an institutional analysis of water service provision in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, building on case studies of informal water distribution, the formal public-private partnership, and the individual and collective interests in this vital service.