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 Disasters.

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.

Associate Professor Elizabeth Grant

Elizabeth’s expertise is research and design in the fields of design and human rights, Indigenous architecture and placemaking, housing and community infrastructure design, and design for people with physical and/or psychosocial disability.

Elizabeth is a Churchill Fellow, has published four books and over 70 papers and serves as a peer reviewer and referee for more than 10 international journals. She is the lead editor of the International Handbook of Contemporary Indigenous Architecture (Springer 2018). In 2015, she was honoured with the International Prison and Correctional Association (ICPA) Excellence in Research Award for her work in this area.

In 2017, she was invited to submit to three Government inquiries and appointed as an expert witness and participant for closed forums as part of the Royal Commission into the Protection and Detention of Children in the Northern Territory. In 2018 she has appeared before Ministerial and Senate inquiries into the housing needs of Indigenous peoples living with a disability.

In 2018, Grant appeared before the Australian Senate and was appointed as an international expert for the New Zealand Government's Hāpaitia te Oranga Tangata Process on the humane design of places of detention for Māori and Pacific Islanders. For more see Elizabeth'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 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.

Dr Briony Towers

Briony is a Research Fellow in the Centre for Urban Research at RMIT University. She completed her Bachelor of Behavioural Science at La Trobe University and her PhD in Psychology at the University of Tasmania.

Her research is primarily focussed on children and disasters and she has a special interest in school-based education for disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation. She has conducted research with children and school communities in Australia, Indonesia and the Philippines and has contributed to the design and evaluation of various programs and initiatives for a range of government and non-government organisations, including the Victorian Country Fire Authority, the Western Australia Department of Fire and Emergency Services, the Victorian State Emergency Service, the New South Wales Rural Fire Service, Fire and Rescue New South Wales, Plan International and Save the Children.

She is the principal investigator for the Bushfire and Natural Hazards Cooperative Research Centre’s Child-Centred Disaster Risk Reduction Project and is a member of the Federal Attorney General’s Disaster Resilience Education Strategy Group. For more see Briony's RMIT staff page.

Dr Erica Mulowayi

Erica Mulowayi has a PhD in Construction and Disaster Management from the School of Civil Engineering and Built Environment at Queensland University of Technology (QUT). Her research focused on the post disaster recovery and reconstruction of critical infrastructure systems such as water, transport, energy and ICT. She investigated the influence of infrastructures interdependencies on the rehabilitation and recovery effort of the community after the 2011 Queensland Floods.

Erica has a range of experience, working as a civil engineer and project manager in the construction industry. She also has demonstrated history of working in the higher education sector. She was involved in the delivery of courses such as high-rise construction and engineering, organisations and projects, design and planning of highways, soil mechanics, transport engineering, and civil engineering systems, taught at QUT, as well as at Western Sydney University.

She was also involved in a research project on design thinking with researchers from the Design Innovation Research Centre (DIRC) at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS). Most recently, she has been involved in the delivery and coordination of courses such as introduction to project management and post-disaster project management in the School of Property, Construction and Project Management at RMIT University. For more see Erica's RMIT staff page.

Pamela Cajilig

Pamela is a Doctoral Scholar in HARB researching the intersection of design, citizenship and participation in post-disaster housing reconstruction after Typhoon Yolande in the Philippines. She currently holds a BA degree in Communication Research and an MA in Anthropology from the University of the Philippines.

She is the co-founder of Curiosity Design Research, which helps organizations understand how people use products and services to create value and spark social change. As part of Curiosity, Pamela works with development, business, and government sectors in applying empathy-driven, human-centered research and design thinking for inclusive innovation.

Pamela leads Curiosity’s research engagements in financial literacy, post-Yolanda shelter design and education, the informal economy, agriculture, affordable healthcare, and other areas of social concern.

Pamela is on the Advisory Board of two non-profits: Roots of Health (maternal and reproductive health) and WeDpro (women’s rights). Pamela is also part of a small but growing group of global researchers that advocate for the serious consideration of fashion as an avenue to investigate broader themes that shape society: history, globalization, and the political economy. For more see Pamela’s Curiosity Design website.