Jo Chaffer

Dr Jo Chaffer serves as an Adjunct Lecturer in the School of Business at UNSW Canberra, University of New South Wales. She holds a B.Sc. (Hons) in Biology, focusing on ecologies, from the University of Sussex, UK; an MA in Development Training with a thesis on cultural collision in organisational change in Nepal from the University of Cumbria, UK; and a PhD titled "Leadership development: containment enough. Liberating psychological safety through the emptiness of leadership" from Lancaster University, UK. She is pursuing an MA in Counselling at the University of Canberra, Australia, and possesses certifications including Agile SCRUM Master, Prince2 Foundation, Clean Coaching foundation level, Master NLP Practitioner, and Mountain Leader (UK).

Dr Chaffer's academic interests center on leadership practices and development, incorporating the concept of leadership 'emptiness' and systems approaches to organisational collaboration. Her research examines disaster recovery and wellbeing as emergent system properties, optimisation of partnerships through foundational processes, creation of functional lead indicators, and critical analysis of assumptions underlying terms like leadership, performance, and community. She develops novel perspectives on psychological safety via relational entanglement over traditional containment, explores group psychodynamics, and emphasises relational interconnections among people, place, and systems. Career-wise, she operates as a global consultant aiding organisations and individuals in transition, with experience in war zones, higher education transformation, Nepal's post-earthquake tourism and insurance challenges, mountain worker conditions across four continents, and UK governmental culture-conflict roles. Previously, she co-designed and delivered the MA Sustainable Leadership Development at the University of Cumbria with Impact International, taught leadership modules, and facilitated global researcher development, vice-chancellor strategy, and change leadership programs. At UNSW Canberra, she is affiliated with the Public Service Research Group. Key scholarly contributions encompass her 2020 PhD thesis and the co-authored journal article "Wellbeing in disaster recovery: Understanding where systems get stuck" published in 2023.

Professional Email: jo.chaffer@adfa.edu.au