Marja Hinfelaar, PhD is the Director of Research and Programmes at the Southern African Institute for Policy and Research (SAIPAR), Lusaka, Zambia since 2012. Marja received her PhD in History in 2001 from Utrecht University, the Netherlands, where her dissertation focused on the history of women’s organisations in urban Zimbabwe. She is the co-editor of 'One Zambia, Many Histories. Towards a History of Post-colonial Zambia' (Brill, Leiden 2008), co-author of 'Governing Extractive Industries: Politics, Histories, Ideas' (Oxford University Press, 2018) and co-editor of 'Democracy and Electoral Politics in Zambia' (Brill, 2020). For ten years, she was based at the National Archives of Zambia, under the Ministry of Home Affairs. She is a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Southern African Studies and the Zambia Social Science Journal. She oversees all programs at SAIPAR, which has an interdisciplinary focus on economics, law and politics/social sciences. Her current focus is on political-economy analysis of government institutions and political parties. Marja has been a resident of Zambia since 1997.