Professor Esther Charlesworth

Esther Charlesworth is a Professor in the School of Architecture and Design at RMIT University, Melbourne and Academic Director of the Masters of Disaster, Design and Development (MoDDD) degree. She undertook her Masters Degree in Architecture and Urban Design at Harvard University and her PhD at the University of York (UK). She is also the founding Director of Architects without Frontiers (AWF). She has worked in architecture and urban design practices in Melbourne, Sydney, Boston and New York and previously lectured in design at the University of Melbourne, QUT and The American University of Beirut. She has published widely on the theme of social justice and architecture, including CityEdge: Contemporary Case Studies in Urbanism (2005), Architects without Frontiers: War, Reconstruction and Design Responsibility (2006), Divided Cities (2009) The EcoEdge (2011), Live Projects (2012); Humanitarian Architecture (2014) and Sustainable Housing Reconstruction. For more see Esther’s RMIT staff page.

Dr Judy Rogers

Dr Judy Rogers is Program Manager of the Master of Disaster, Design and Development. Prior to joining the MoDDD team she was program manager of a double degree in Landscape Architecture and Urban and Regional planning in the School of Architecture and Design at RMIT. Her research focus is multidisciplinary, incorporating design, planning, policy and sustainability science. She has researched and written on urban sustainability challenges with a particular focus on the discursive construction of ‘sustainable’ cities and the implications of these understandings on social equity and resilience. She has also maintained an on-going reflective practice in the field of Education for Sustainability. Qualifications include a PhD focusing on Sustainable City Policy, a Master of Environmental Science and an undergraduate degree in History.

Professor John Fien

John Fien is Professor of Practice in the interdisciplinary field of Disaster, Design and Development. He has been involved in the MoDDD degree program since its beginning, and has helped prepare and teach core courses such as Disaster, Design and Development, Building Urban Resilience and Shelter and Settlement, as well as electives such as Humanitarian Architecture and Climate Change, Design and Disaster. His role now focuses on developing national and global partnerships and fostering an applied research culture in HARB. John has been a Professor at Griffith and Swinburne Universities as well as RMIT and has led development projects and evaluations in several countries, including: Kenya, South Africa, Thailand, Vietnam, The Philippines and Fiji. This has involved working with agencies such as The World Bank, UNESCO, UNICEF UNEP, AusAID, OECD and WWF-International. For more see John's RMIT staff page.

Dr Leila Irajifar

Leila is an interdisciplinary academic working at the intersection of urban planning, design and disaster management. Her research tackles the challenges of operationalising urban resilience, post-disaster reconstruction and her recent research focuses on the applications of complex systems theory in urban resilience planning and developing models to better understand these complexities and interdependencies in the face of climate change and other social and environmental hazards. Leila holds a bachelor in architecture and a masters in post-disaster reconstruction from Shahid Beheshti University in Iran. She earned her PhD in urban resilience planning from Griffith University in Australia. She had been involved in UN-Habitat’s City Resilience Profiling Program in Barcelona and worked as postdoctoral research fellow at the Institute for Great Lakes Research at CMU before joining RMIT University. Prior to academia, she had several years of professional experience as an architect/planner in public and private practice concerning disaster management and post-disaster reconstruction projects. For more see Leila's RMIT staff page

Dr Judy Lawry

Judy takes a multidisciplinary approach to assisting communities identify ways to build their capacity to adapt to climate -related hazards including natural disasters. Her expertise includes facilitation of participatory communication to enable local voices to be heard in decision making, and building capacity in Adaptive Leadership and local storytelling to give voice to local communities. Judy’s research focuses on the role of communication in addressing global environmental challenges within the following contexts:

• Communication and Media Studies
• Management
• Communication for Climate Change Adaptation and Disaster Risk Reduction

Dr Yazid Ninsalam

Yazid is a Lecturer in the School of Architecture and Urban Design at RMIT University, Melbourne. He holds a Doctor of Philosophy in Architecture and was awarded concurrent degrees in Master of Landscape Architecture and Bachelor of Arts (Architecture) with honours from the National University of Singapore. He has worked as a landscape architect at the National Parks Board, Singapore and a doctoral researcher at the Future Cities Laboratory, established by ETH Zurich and the Singapore National Research Foundation. His research foregrounds the deployment of ubiquitous terrestrial, underwater and aerial sensing methods to produce precise local observations of human-environment conflicts that result from rapid urban transitions in Southeast Asian cities. He has published widely on the theme of landscape architecture. For more see Yazid's RMIT staff page.

Dr Linje Manyozo

Linje Manyozo is a community development practitioner and a student of society, who currently teaches Communication for Development in the School of Media and Communication at RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia. He is also a Research Associate of the Department of Development Studies, Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, South Africa. Linje has also taught and directed the MSc Programme in Media, Communications and Development in the Department of Media and Communications, London School of Economics and Political Science (2008-2012). Linje has published three books: Communicating Development With Communities (Routledge, 2017); Media, Communication and Development (Sage, 2013) and People's Radio (Southbound, 2012). For more see Linje's's RMIT staff page.