Takeshi Ito

Professor of Political Economy and Political Ecology at the Faculty of Liberal Arts and Graduate School of Global Studies, Sophia University

My work is informed by broad interests in agrarian and environmental change. I explore these themes through a multidisciplinary perspective that enables me to understand the complexity and diversity of social-ecological interactions that shape human well-being and ecosystem integrity. I have conducted fieldwork in Southeast Asia and Japan. I draw mostly on qualitative methods and relational analysis of society and ecology.

Carl Middleton

Associate Professor and Director of the Graduate Studies in International Development Studies (MAIDS-GRID) Program, and Director of the Center for Social Development Studies (CSDS) in the Faculty of Political Science of Chulalongkorn University, Thailand

Dr. Middleton’s research interests are oriented around the politics and policy of the environment in Southeast Asia, with a particular focus on humanity-in-nature relations, the political ecology of water and energy, human mobility and climate change, and the political economy and ecology of regionalism.

Kaoru Sugihara

Honorary Fellow and Visiting Professor at the Research Institute for Humanity and Nature in Kyoto

Trained in Japan as an economic historian, he worked for the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London (1985-1996), Osaka University (1996-2006), Kyoto University (2006-2012), the University of Tokyo (2012-2013), the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies (2013-2016) and the Research Institute for Humanity and Nature (2016-2022) before assuming the current positions.He has written widely on global economic and environmental history, including Paths to the Emerging State in Asia and Africa (co-ed. 2019), and The East Asian Miracle in Global History (2020).

Professor at the Disaster Prevention Research Institute at Kyoto University

Chemical Engineer, and holds an MSc. in Applied Development and a Ph.D. in Environmental Engineering from Tulane University.Research interests include area-wide Natech risk management, accident investigation and analysis, risk perception and communication studies, and climate change impacts on the oil and gas industry.

Carl Grundy-Warr

Senior Lecturer, Department of Geography, 

National University of Singapore.Research areas: Transboundary environmental geopolitics; Political geographies of natural hazards; and political ecologies of hazards,development in Southeast Asia. Past projects: Geopolitics of forced cross-border displacements (Myanmar and Thailand) in the 1990s; Political and cultural geographies of the post-Indian Ocean tsunami along the Andaman Sea coast of Thailand; Post-disaster rebuilding and resettlement along the Andaman coast; Transborder environmental geopolitics and the Mekong River Basin; Hydro-social relations of the Tonle Sap (Great Lake of Cambodia).

Daisuke Naito

Assistant professor at the Laboratory of Forest Resources and Society, the Graduate School of Agriculture, Kyoto University.

Kozo Nagami

Specially Appointed Professor Green Goals Initiative International Research Institute of Disaster Science (IRIDeS). Graduate School of Environmental Studies, Tohoku University.

Joined Tohoku University in 2022 after more than 28 year experience working in Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA). In JICA, he engaged in three big disaster recovery assistance operations: Indonesia tsunami in 2004, the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011, and Nepal earthquake in 2015. From 2019, he was the Group Director for Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) Group of JICA.  Targeting developing middle-income countries, he is promoting research and education on policy-making support framework to sustainably integrate development and DRR.

Maya Dania

Assistant Professor in Sociology at the School of Social Innovation, Mae Fah Luang University, and a Ph.D. candidate in Social Science at Chiang Mai University (Thailand). Fellow of the UKPSF and UNESCO Chair-Kobe University on Gender, Vulnerability, and Well-Being in Disaster Risk Reduction

Maya has authored numerous peer-reviewed international publications, including articles and book chapters, focusing on climate resilience, gender-inclusive disaster recovery, and the Anthropocene's socio-environmental impact in Southeast Asia. Her contributions include "Making Kin along the Mekong River" (Brill Publisher) and "Mainstreaming Gender into Disaster Recovery Policy and Practice" (Springer Nature Singapore).Her work integrates disaster resilience, environmental sustainability, and gender vulnerability to address pressing social and environmental challenges in Southeast Asia.

Mizan B. F. Bisri

Assistant Professor at the Graduate School of International Cooperation Studies, Kobe University, Japan. Senior Researcher at Asian Disaster Reduction Center.

With 14 years of research and professional experience, his portfolio covers disaster risk management (DRM), climate change adaptation (CCA), humanitarian actions, disaster education, and science-policy interface, with a specific focus in the Southeast Asian region.Since 2019 until now, he has also supported The World Bank (East Asia and The Pacific) as a disaster risk management specialist.Before the current post, he spent his post-doctoral at The United Nations University-Institute for the Advanced Study of Sustainability (UNU-IAS) and The University of Tokyo.

Reni Juwitasari

Pursuing her Ph.D. in Development Science at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Khon Kaen University. Currently, working on her research topics about disaster risk reduction and resilience, education for sustainable development (ESD) and sustainability (EFS), and local knowledge of disasters and climate change. Member of UNESCO Chair Kobe University on the working group of Gender, Vulnerability, and Well-being in Disaster Risk Reduction Support and Asia Pacific Academic Network on Disaster Displacement (APANDD) of Raoul Wallenberg Institute (RWI), respectively.

Chaya Vaddhanaphuti

Lecturer at the Department of Geography, Faculty of Social Sciences, Chiang Mai University, Thailand. Chaya earned his PhD in Human Geography in 2017 from King's College London.

His research focuses on climate justice, cultures and histories of weather, and forest fire and haze pollution governance in northern Thailand from perspectives of political ecology, more-than-human, and Science and Technology Studies (STS).

May Aye Naw Thiri

Assistant professor at the Sustainable Society Design Center, the Graduate School of Frontier Sciences, University of Tokyo.PhD in International Development from the Graduate School of International Development, Nagoya University.

In 2019, she received a fellowship to work on the "Unburnable Fossil Fuels and the Global Carbon Budget" project at the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology, Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain. From 2019 to 2023, she was a team member of the Environmental Justice Atlas (ejatlas.org) and continues contributing to the project. Interested in human-nature relations, exploring grassroots resistance, ecological distribution conflicts, environmental justice, and responses to natural disasters.

Ming Li Yong

Fellow in the Research Program at the East-West Center

Studies transboundary water governance and hydropower development in the Mekong River Basin, and conducts research on community-based natural resource management, civil society movements, institutional governance arrangements, and public participation. Leading projects in Southeast Asia focused on centering community perspectives on climate change, and developing research and education initiatives relating to water security and governance in the Mekong Delta in Cambodia and Vietnam.

Sinwa Naw

Originally from Myanmar, he is a PhD student in the Graduate Program of Global Studies at Sophia University.

Research focuses on political ecology issues in Myanmar, particularly examining ethnic armed movements, foreign investments, and natural resource conflicts. Current research investigates the transformation of Myanmar’s rural landscape, shaped by political conflicts, conservation projects and global economic forces.

Thianchai Surimas

Lecturer at the Faculty of Social Administration at Thammasat University, Thailand. PhD in International Development Studies from Chulalongkorn University

Research focuses on environmental politics and policy, political ecology of water, environmental justice, and development issues in Thailand and the Mekong region.

Yuta Hara

Associate Professor in Global Environmental Studies, Tohoku University Geographer

Research interests include resilient cultural landscapes and land use that coexist harmoniously with nature in rural areas.He address research issues related to ecosystem conservation and sustainable use, disaster risk reduction, and creating a society where people's lives are harmonized through fieldwork, land use surveys, deciphering old maps and photos, and GIS spatial analysis. For example, focused on the social and food changes in the Chinese Loess Plateau, which is greening after experiencing desertification; the lives of the Japanese Hidden Christians, who have a history of persecution; and the restoration of Satoyama culture in the disaster-affected Noto Peninsula.

Unai Pascual

HeIkerbasque Research Professor, BC3 - Basque Centre for Climate Change.

He leads the Climate & Natural Environment Research Line at BC3 - Basque Centre for Climate Change. Leader of the Climate & Natural Environment Research Line at BC3. Sustainability science, environmental/ecological economics, natural resource modeling, global environmental change, environment and development, and biodiversity conservation. More than 20 years working on sustainability science and environment & development links around the world. Senior Lecturer at the University of Cambridge (2003-13). Lecturer at the University of Manchester (2001-03). Doctor in Environmental Economics (2002) from the University of York (United Kingdom).