Lochner Marais is a Professor of Development Studies in the Centre for Development Support at the University of the Free State (UFS). He is also an honorary professor at the Sustainable Minerals Institute (University of Queensland, Australia). He serves on the editorial board of Habitat International and is also the Specialty Chief Co-editor for the ‘Cities in the Global South’ section of the journal Frontiers in Sustainable Cities. 

His research interests include housing policy, small cities and towns (mining and renewable towns and cities), and public health focusing on children. In addition to concentrating on these themes separately, he focuses on integrating them. Marais has authored, co-authored, and compiled more than 250 research reports, including 180 refereed articles in peer-reviewed journals or books. He has also co-edited nine books and is the author of one scholarly book (in print). He has a specific passion for creating and managing interdisciplinary projects.

He prefers research that focuses on real-world problems in housing policy, mine-community relations, mine closure, and urban health. The main contribution of his work has been to improve the understanding of the social consequences of mine closure, mining’s role in creating place attachment, and the relationship between mine closure and social disruption. He was also the first researcher to link mine closure and social disruption and to warn against dependencies on mining booms.