Happy Kayuni is Professor in University of Malawi's Political and Administrative Studies Department and holds a PhD (Political Science) from University of the Western Cape. Currently he is also Dean of the Faculty of Social Science. His main competence and professional expertise are in the following areas: political governance, public administration and management, gender and international development policy. He previously worked as Programme Manager for Women's World Banking-Malawi Affiliate. He also holds a Master of Public Administration degree (MPA) Distinction from the University of Stellenbosch obtained in 2004.

During his studies, he won several awards such as the South African Embassy Study Bursary Award (during the second year of his studies in the University of Malawi), Stellenbosch's Postgraduate Merit Bursary Award (at the completion of his honours degree), School of Public Planning and Management's Student of the Year Award (DUK-Student 2005) and the prestigious PricewaterhouseCooper Award for being the best MPA student. He has co-edited books and authored (or co-authored) over fifty peer reviewed journal articles and book chapters as well as over a hundred research/consultancy reports and conference papers. In relation to training programmes, Happy has facilitated numerous Team Building programmes for various local governments and ministries in Malawi. He has also been involved in training Malawian members of parliament under the Democracy Consolidation Programme. Happy is also a trained SADC-PF Elections Observer. Happy co-facilitated and co-drafted the Malawi Community Development Policy.

He also assisted in the drafting of the Malawi Refugee Policy and the Malawi NGO Policy. Apart from University of Malawi where he is employed, Happy Kayuni has also taught (as part-time lecturer) in several tertiary institutions in South Africa and these are University of the Western Cape, Cape Peninsula University of Technology and Bellville Business College. Currently he is also Faculty Affiliate in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Initiative Programme at Centre for Development and the Environment (SUM), University of Oslo, Norway. He is external examiner (in public administration and governance) in the following universities: University of Fort Hare, University of Pretoria, University of Johannesburg, University of Free State and University of Kwazulu-Natal.

Email: hkayuni@cc.ac.mw

Amanda Lea Robinson is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Ohio State University. She earned a PhD in Political Science from Stanford University (2013) and a BA in Biology from Appalachian State University (2005). Her research focuses on the ways in which identity and culture defined by nationality, ethnicity, race, and gender influence political behavior, and how political processes affect identity change, primarily in Africa and among the African diasporas. She has been conducting research in Malawi for over 12 years. 

Email: robinson.1012@osu.edu

Gowokani Chijere Chirwa works at the University of Malawi, Chancellor College, Economics Department. He is an Economist who was trained at the University of York, UK and was based at the Center for Health Economics. His main research interests are Health Economics and Global Health Economics. He focuses his research on low-and middle-income countries and it involves the micro econometric applications in the economic evaluation of public health interventions; the measurement of socioeconomic inequalities in and determinants of health; econometric decomposition methods; empirical policy impact evaluation; and the usequasi-experimental methods. In addition to this, he is an expert in both qualitative and quantitative surveys and he has also been a consultant for various institutions such as the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), WHO, ODI, UNICEF, among others. For more information, visit his google page, Google Scholar, ResearchGate, ORCiD

Email: gowokani@gmail.com & gchirwa@cc.ac.mw

Edister S. Jamu is Senior Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Malawi. He lectures organizational and social psychology, psychology of motivation, coaching and mentoring, and qualitative research methods among others. He is current Head of Psychology Department and Faculty of Social Science Postgraduate Programmes Coordinator (MA and PhD in Development Studies Programmes). He obtained his PhD in Business and Economic Studies (Work and Employment Relations) from the University of Leeds, UK; MSc (Industrial & Organizational Psychology) and Graduate Diploma in Science (Psychology) both from the University of Western Australia; and Bachelor of Social Science (Psychology and Demography) from the University of Malawi. He is a qualitative researcher whose research interests focus on organisation studies, talent management, higher education, digital technologies, and disability studies among others. He has experience in team building, leadership and management training, evaluation studies, mapping activities, and strategy development. 

Email: ejamu@cc.ac.mw

Francis Kibirige is the Managing Director and co-founder of Hatchile Consult Ltd, a social research company based in Kampala, Uganda. Over the last 20 years, Francis has been engaged in development research in Uganda and elsewhere in Africa through the Afrobarometer (www.afrobarometer.org). Hatchile Consult won the bid to become the Afrobarometer national partner institution in Uganda, and Francis the co-National Investigator. He is part of a team of resource persons who provide technical assistance to Afrobarometer network partners in survey sampling, overall quality assistance and analysis/reporting.

Over the past 20-years, he has handled and been part of a team of consultants on over 100 national social surveys in governance, finance, health, agriculture, markets and education working with private, public and donor-supported projects, employing both qualitative and quantitative methods. Some of Francis published (and co-authored) works include understanding citizen's attitudes towards democracy in Uganda, how delivery of electoral, political and economic goods impacts support for democracy in Uganda and understanding support for electoral law reforms in Uganda. His forthcoming publications titled: Glimmer in the Dark: Civic Education and Voter Turn Out in Developing Countries and Out of Fear or Reason? Understanding Determinants for Presidential Tenure choices in Africa, builds on work done with election observer missions.

Jimmy Kainja is a lecturer in Media, Communication and Cultural Studies at the University of Malawi. Before joining the University of Malawi Kainja taught Sociology and Media Studies at London Metropolitan University between 2010 and 2012, following completion of his postgraduate studies at the same University. Kainja's areas of academic and research interest are communication policy and regulation, journalism, freedom of expression, new media technologies, disinformation and misinformation, and the intersection between media, democracy and development. Kainja is also an adjunct researcher at the Institute of Public Opinion and Research (IPOR).

Among other assignments and engagements, Kainja was a recipient of the Collaboration on International ICT Policy for East and Southern Africa (CIPESA) 2020 - 2021 research fellowship. During the fellowship, Kainja studied disinformation, misinformation, data protection legislation, and access to information in Malawi. Since 2019, Kainja has been a contributing researcher to Freedom House's Freedom on the Net annual report, focusing on Malawi. He is also a contributing researcher to CIPESAs State of Internet Freedom in Africa annual report, focusing on Malawi. Kainja is a founding member of Africa Blogging, an online platform featuring a plurality of voices and views supporting democratic culture and debate in sub-Saharan Africa, which he co-edited between 2015 and 2019. He is currently researching communication surveillance and privacy concerns in Malawi, for the University of Johannesburg's Media Policy and Democracy Project.

Abel Oyuke holds a Master's Degree in Development Studies from the University of Nairobi. He has an elaborate track in development practice and research spanning close to 20 years. Between 2003 and 2010, Mr. Oyuke worked on development programming and policy with among other institutions Action Aid International and Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA). During this period, he also taught as part time lecturer at Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology in Kenya before joining Africa's premier research network, Afrobarometer in 2011 where he continues to work as a senior manager. Mr. Oyuke has special expertise in research methodologies and survey management. His areas of interest include democracy and governance, social protection, informal economy, local development and socio-economic analysis. He has consulted for and provided collaboration leadership to many local and international development and research organizations. Mr. Oyuke is a director and co-founder of IPOR Kenya.