Biography
Chilombo Musa is a PhD candidate in the Department of Land Economy at the University of Cambridge. Her research explores formal and informal institutions that influence the emergence of informal settlements. She studies precolonial, colonial, and postcolonial institutions that shaped human settlement in urban areas and how land and housing markets develop outside the formal context. Chilombo is also interested in power and how it influences policymaking. In particular, she is interested in understanding how policymakers’ interests affect their relationship with other actors and how that determines the trajectory of a policymaking process.
Chilombo also works on the ‘Formalisation of customary land and its implications for women’s land tenure security and livelihoods’ at the Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS) at the University of the Western Cape, where she explores the gendered implications of changing rural landscapes. She is a lecturer at the University of Lusaka, a former research fellow at the UN Economic Commission for Africa, and a research analyst at the London School of Economics Centre for Economic Performance. She holds an MPhil in Development Studies from the University of Oxford and a BSc. In Real Estate from the Copperbelt University. She is an organiser on the TEDxLusaka Committee and is a founding Vice President of the Cambridge Initiative of African Urbanism. Chilombo is also interested in health, wellness and fitness, dance for fitness, mindfulness, meditation, and is an aspiring wine connoisseur.