Crossing Borders Governing Environmental Disasters in a Global Urban Age in Asia and the Pacific

Michelle Ann Miller is a Senior Research Fellow at the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore. Trained in political science, her research focuses on intersections between urban and regional governance in the context of human conflict and environmental change. She leads the Disaster Governance theme of the Asian Urbanisms Cluster at ARI. Her interdisciplinary publications speak to contemporary theoretical debates and key policy issues in environmental disaster governance, decentralisation, urban change, and citizenship and belonging. A reoccurring concern throughout her work is with the policy potential and lived experience of decentralisation in generating more inclusive and effective forms of governance, especially in Indonesia but across Asia more broadly. Before joining ARI, she taught at Deakin University and Charles Darwin University in Australia, and she has held visiting research fellowships in Indonesia at both the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (Jakarta) and Ar-Raniry Institut Agama Islam Negeri (Banda Aceh). She is international advisor of the Varieties of Peace research program, a global initiative of Umeå University, supported by the Swedish Foundation for Humanities and Social Sciences.   

Mike Douglass is Professor at the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, where he is Leader of the Asian Urbanisms Cluster. He is Emeritus Professor and former Chair of the Department of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Hawaii where he was also the Director of the Globalization Research Center. He received his PhD in Urban Planning from UCLA. He previously held positions in the United Nations and taught at the Institute of Social Studies (Netherlands) and the University of East Anglia (UK).

Matthias Garschagen is the Head of Vulnerability Assessment, Risk Management and Adaptive Planning (VARMAP) at United Nations University – Institute for Environment and Human Securit

y (UNU-EHS). He holds a PhD in Geography from the University of Cologne, Germany. His research focuses on urban vulnerability and social resilience in the context of natural hazard and climate change impacts, particularly in South and Southeast Asia. He is especially concerned with the governance of urban adaptation efforts in dynamically transforming countries and with the question of how shifts in vulnerability can be assessed in a forward-looking manner using novel scenario techniques. Over the last years, he has been taking on a leading role (principal investigator and work package leader) in several international research projects. His research findings have been published (authored and co-authored) in high-ranking international journals. From 2012, Matthias Garschagen has been an invited contributing author to the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report, in the chapter on Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability in Asia (WG2, chapter 24).