Marlise completed a PhD in public health at the International Centre for Reproductive Health at the University of Ghent (Belgium) on sex worker access to health care services in South Africa and Kenya. She has worked as a researcher for Project Literacy, the AIDS Law Project and the Treatment Action Campaign.

She currently holds the position of Policy Development and Advocacy Specialist at Sonke Gender Justice in Cape Town and focuses on the decriminalisation of sex work, as well as prison reform. She is a visiting researcher at the School of Public Health & Family Medicine, University of Cape Town and at the African Centre for Migration & Society, Wits University, where she pursues her research and advocacy interests in feminism, human rights and HIV/AIDS, with a particular focus on sex work and gender-based violence.