Rate My Professor Jacqueline Baker

Jacqueline Baker is a Senior Lecturer in Southeast Asian Politics at the Sir Walter Murdoch School of Public Policy and International Affairs and Principal Fellow at the Indo-Pacific Research Centre, Murdoch University. She also holds a fellowship at the Asia Research Centre, Murdoch University. Baker earned her PhD in Comparative Government from the London School of Economics in 2011, an MSc in Social Anthropology with distinction from the same institution in 2005, and dual BAs in Asian Studies (Indonesian) and Political Science from the Australian National University in 2002, graduating with first class honours. As a 2004 John Monash Scholar, she previously served as Research Fellow at the Centre for Transnational Crime Prevention, University of Wollongong, and Visiting Fellow at the Australian National University's Department for Political and Social Change. Her consulting work on security and human rights spans international organizations including the United Nations Office for Drugs and Crime, Amnesty International, The Asia Foundation, the European Commission, and Timor Leste’s Commission for Truth, Reception and Reconciliation. She currently leads as President of the Indonesia Council at Murdoch University and sits on the national board of the Australian Consortium for In-Country Indonesian Studies, while co-editing New Mandala, a key platform for Southeast Asian analysis.

Baker's research focuses on politics and security in Southeast Asia, emphasizing Indonesia's political economy, illicit economies, corruption, violence, and security institutions. Notable publications include 'Reformasi reversal: Structural drivers of democratic decline in Jokowi’s middle-income Indonesia' (Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies, 2023), 'Dirty money states: Illicit economies and the state in Southeast Asia' (Critical Asian Studies, 2015, with S. Milne), 'The rhizome state: Democratizing Indonesia's off-budget economy' (Critical Asian Studies, 2015), 'The parman economy: post-authoritarian shifts in the off-budget economy of Indonesia's security institutions' (Indonesia, 2013), and 'Professionalism without reform: The security sector under Yudhoyono' (The Yudhoyono Presidency, 2015). In 2024, she co-presented 'The political economy of loss and damage in Indonesia' at the Annual Conference of the Australian Political Studies Association. Her Indonesian fieldwork inspired the radio documentary 'Eat Pray Mourn', awarded a bronze medal at the New York Festivals Awards in 2014.