I am a Lecturer in Development Studies at the School of Social and Political Sciences, the University of Melbourne, specialising in climate change adaptation, environmental justice, and international development across the Asia-Pacific. My research critically examines how climate risk, socio-economic inequality, and political power intersect to shape climate responses in the Global South, with particular attention to whose knowledge counts, who benefits, and who bears the costs of adaptation.

Using political economy, environmental justice, and decolonial frameworks, I interrogate dominant technocratic, top-down, and market-oriented approaches to climate adaptation and mitigation. My work shows how interventions such as planned relocation, hard infrastructures, nature-based solutions (NBS) and resilience-building interventions can reproduce or intensify existing inequalities, even when framed as climate solutions. At the same time, I foreground community-led pathways to adaptation, drawing on participatory and community-based methods to centre local knowledge, lived experience, and marginalised voices in the design and evaluation of climate interventions.

I combine critical scholarship with engaged practice, working closely with governments, civil society organisations, and communities to re-imagine climate adaptation in more just, inclusive, and transformative ways. I have built long-standing research partnerships across the Philippines, Vietnam, Papua New Guinea, and Fiji, and have secured over AU$1 million in competitive research funding from sources including the British Academy, CLARE-ASEAN, the Sydney Environment Institute, START International, and La Trobe Asia. My research has been published in leading journals such as Global Environmental Change, World Development, Climatic Change, Political Geography, Habitat International, Geoforum, Climate and Development, Environment and Planning E, and Local Environment. Alongside research, I teach and supervise across sustainability, development studies, and research methods, with a strong record of postgraduate supervision to completion.

Dr

Justin See

Lecturer in Development Studies

School of Social and Political Sciences

Dr

Justin See

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