Rate My Professor Jacqueline Baker

Dr Jacqueline Baker is a Senior Lecturer in Southeast Asian Politics in the School of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences at Murdoch University, where she also serves as Principal Fellow in the Indo-Pacific Research Centre. She earned her PhD in Government from the London School of Economics in 2011, an MSc with distinction in Social Anthropology from the same university in 2005, and dual Bachelor of Arts degrees with first-class honours in Asian Studies (Indonesian) and Political Science from the Australian National University in 2002. As a 2004 John Monash Scholar, she received funding for her postgraduate studies at the LSE. Prior to her current role, Baker was a Research Fellow at the Centre for Transnational Crime Prevention at the University of Wollongong, a Visiting Fellow at the Australian National University’s Department of Political and Social Change, and has consulted for international organizations such as the United Nations Office for Drugs and Crime, Amnesty International, The Asia Foundation, and Timor-Leste’s Commission for Truth, Reception and Reconciliation on security and human rights issues.

Baker’s research focuses on the critical political economy of Southeast Asia, with particular emphasis on Indonesia, examining themes of police power, corruption, human rights, and processes of democratic decline. Her influential publications include “Reformasi Reversal: Structural Drivers of Democratic Decline in Jokowi’s Middle-Income Indonesia” published in the Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies (2023), “Is Indonesian Police Violence Excessive? The Dynamics of Police Shootings, 2005–2014” in the Journal of Contemporary Asia (2023), a chapter on joint police-military operations in “Security Studies: Critical Perspectives” (2024), and contributions to “The Political Economy of Southeast Asia: Politics and Uneven Development under Hyperglobalisation” (2020). She co-edits New Mandala, a prominent Southeast Asia-focused analysis platform hosted by ANU, presides over the Indonesia Council at Murdoch University, and serves on the national board of the Australian Consortium for In-Country Indonesian Studies (ACICIS). Additionally, a 2014 radio documentary ‘Eat Pray Mourn’, based on her Indonesian fieldwork, won a bronze medal at the New York Festivals Awards.