About Jonatan Lassa

ORCID: 0000-0002-8432-842X; Scopus ID: 25825179800;  WoS ID: M-6112-2019; Google Scholar: JA Lassa; ResearchGate: Jonatan Lassa RG.

Modesty in the roles of a gardener (a must!); a father and husband; a scholar; an activist (when necessary). A trained social scientist with engineering background. I used to live/study and/or fulltime work in the following countries in the last 25 years: Indonesia, England, Germany, USA, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand.

I have conducted fieldworks in the following countries: Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand, Viet Nam, Fiji, Solomon Islands, Australia and New Zealand.

I have a balanced mix of experience as an academic/scholar (recently) and a practitioner/NGO worker (past). I started my career as a civil engineering graduate, responsible for supervising solar-, wind- and hydro-power structures in Eastern Indonesia in 1999 in a E7 Renewable Project. I had also the opportunity to work with Rekayasa Industry, a state-owned enterprise, as a civil supervisor for a cement factory plant construction project (1999/2000). These two jobs offered me rich opportunities to apply my structural engineering skills and concrete technology.

Since the East Timor refugee crisis, I saw an opportunity to work in the field of international development and humanitarian crises. I worked with the World Food Programme in West Timor and later in East Java (2000–2002). Since then, I have become a more general development worker, moving back and forth between disaster & crisis management, climate change, human security, risk governance, food policy, environmental governance, renewable energy, and participatory development.

I started my academic career very late as I spent the first 12 years after undergraduate in ‘real-world’ professional settings (with NGOs/INGOs, United Nations organizations, the private sector, think tanks and consulting industries).

Becoming a scholar

I completed my PhD at the University of Bonn while based at United Nations University in Bonn, Germany in 2011. I also completed one winter-semester post-doctoral fellowship at Ash Centre – Kennedy School of Government, Cambridge, MA, in 2011 and later received a Willis Re Postdoctoral Research Fellow position at the Institute of Catastrophic and Risk Management (ICRM), Nanyang Technological University in 2011/2012. 

I decided to move back home in West Timor, Indonesia in late 2012 where together with other West Timorese scholars returned from Australia and UK, we co-established think tanks (e.g. IRGSC) and alternative education school (e.g. Kupang Montessori School).

I have the privilege to have been working as a scientist at NTS RSIS-NTU Singapore (2014-2016), and faculty member at CDU Darwin Australia (2016-2024) and later as a senior scientist at Institute of Geological and Nuclear Sciences (New Earth Sciences New Zealand) in New Zealand (since 2024). I still maintain my association with CDU as an adjunct fellow, supervising 5 PhD students.

I identify myself as an interdisciplinary social scientist with an engineering background! My research focuses on climate change adaptation, disaster risk reduction, humanitarian studies, emergency planning, crisis management, food security, sustainability science, risk governance, urban-rural resilience and broader societal safety studies. Recently, I have been trying to use Science, Technology and Society (STS) framework to inform my research on disaster and climate change risks.

I have been teaching and supervising students on the interdisciplinary dimension of humanitarian emergency and disaster management at Charles Darwin University, Darwin, Australia (2016-2024) where I was responsible for teaching core units offered in the Master of Emergency and Disaster Management, Master of Health Emergency Preparedness and Response and the Bachelor of Humanitarian Aid and Development. I had the privilege to teach Global Environmental Change and Humanitarian Response course for one semester (cover) at Auckland University of Technology in 2024 (contracted via GNS Science). 

My contributions to global disaster studies include macro and micro-level disaster governance, complex network theory application in disaster management, institutions and institutionalisation framework in disaster reduction. I am promoting a new concept namely the networked ecosystems approach to humanitarian studies and disaster risk reduction, through both academic papers and consultancy work. My doctoral research has been one of the first systematic studies on disaster governance, looking at institutions and governance practices in disaster reduction in countries around the world. I was the first one who coined and defined the term “disaster risk governance” (DRG) as a framework in my PhD thesis. Google hits on DRG grew from zero in 2007 and now reaching 90,000 as of early 2019.

I am a generalist as my interest is in broader interdisciplinarity and approaches to disaster risk and climate change. I recently worked on understanding the structure of political will on disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation using a quantitative and qualitative approaches. I have been working on risk objects, disaster policy-making, disasters and utopia, systematic analysis of disaster code/laws (Indonesia and Australia), global mapping on political will for disaster reduction, governing climate and disaster loss, social network analysis and network theory application in climate adaptation and disaster management, multi-hazard + conflict early warning system, humanitarian reform, humanitarian technology, institutional vulnerability assessment, local disaster management policy reform, global and regional humanitarian ecosystems, NGOs/CSOs network structure, urban climate governance, disaster education, food system under climate change and critical realist approach to disaster policy-making.

Only a few rare individual scientists/academics/scholars who can be successful without a team. And obviously, I am not one of them. So, I do not fully agree in academic ranking because good disaster sciences are always a result of collective work of committed individuals from peers to research students. However, one might have argued that any alternative recognition might or might not do justice to those who focus on quality teachings and remain unseen by the world. 

Regardless, it was a good feeling that your work is being recognized – as I was awarded: “Top Research in the Field of Emergency Management” by the Australian Research Magazine 2023“, 2024, 2025 and 2026. Many disaster scholars deserved to be the one on the List but somehow, they did not categorise themselves to be part of emergency management field under business and management category. So, in a way I was albeit ‘lucky’. 

Also, a mixed but still good feeling to be listed as part of top 2% scientist in 2024 and 2025 and the “Science and Health Editor’s Choice Award 2022” for contributions to science-based journalism focusing on disasters and health in The Conversation (ID) in 2022.

Research and teaching position

  • Institute of Geological and Nuclear Sciences [Since 2024]
  • Charles Darwin University, Australia [2016-2024] [Since 2024 as an adjunct fellow]
  • Auckland University of Technology [Cover] [2024]
  • RSIS Nanyang Technological University, Singapore [2014-2016]
  • ICRM, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore [2011-2012]
  • Ash Centre, Harvard Kennedy School, Harvard University, USA [2011]
  • United Nations University Institute of Environment and Human Security [2007-2010]

Long-term Advisory and/or co-founder Position

  • Resilience Development Initiatives, Indonesia [2013-Now]
  • Institute of Resource Governance and Social Change, Indonesia [2012-Now]
  • Kupang Montessori Schools [2013-Now]

Education

Professional and other Training Courses: