Department of Environmental Health,
University of Malawi
Elizabeth Tilley is currently a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Environmental Health at the University of Malawi, the Polytechnic in Blantyre, Malawi. As an engineer and an economist, Elizabeth is interested in the technological and financial drivers for sanitation uptake and use. She spent 10 years at the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology (Eawag) where she worked extensively in the field of nutrient recovery in both Europe and low-income countries; her lab-based work has addressd the chemistry of fertilizer production while much of her field work addressed the financial drivers of urine separation and collection. Her work in South Africa was one of the first times cash-based incentives had been tested for for urine collection and use.
Currently, her work addresses all aspects of environmental sanitation in urban Blantyre: solid waste collection, informal recycling, pit emptying, sludge treatment, and drinking water quality all through a lens of financial and technological sustainability. She has published more than 20 peer-revewed papers, is a Board member of the Malawi Medical Journal, an editor for Water SA and is committed to delivering high quality WASH education at the undergraduate and graduate level in Malawi.