Marlene is an independent researcher who has worked for 15 years at The Australian National University, The Institute of Social Sciences in The Hague, and the University of Bath. Marlène is both trained as a forester and a social scientist, and for the last 20 years has worked extensively on natural resource management in South and South East Asia, as well as more recently in West and Central Africa. Her areas of work include governance, gender and social equity, power analysis, and participatory learning action. She works at the interfaces between academic research and practice, methodologies, and on the environmental and social dimensions of livelihoods and resource management.

Marlene is also highly experienced organisational development and change specialist. She has a proven understanding and appreciation of M&E standards and approaches as well as having a strong focus on gender mainstreaming. As an organisational development specialist, she is skilled at designing and facilitating change approaches to improve performance. She brings comprehensive expertise and practical knowledge of strategy development, business planning, results management, coupled with being a highly effective trainer and facilitator.

She has a strong knowledge of qualitative research methods having conducted numerous evaluations as well as developing training programmes to build capacity within donors, CSO and private sector organisations.