About

I am a Research Fellow at the Manchester Institute of Innovation Research (MIoIR) and a core staff member at the Centre for Development Informtics (CDI) at the University of Manchester, UK. In 2009 I was awarded ‘The Outstanding/Best Academic of the Year 2009’ by Manchester Business School and in 2010 I received the highly prestigious ‘Hallsworth Fellowship’ awarded by the University of Manchester in the area of Political Economy of Innovations and Social Change.

I have a first degree in Industrial Engineering (Institute of Technology Bandung, Indonesia, 1990-1994), an MSc in Information Systems Enginering (Dept. of Computation, University of Manchester Institute of Science & Technology, UK, 2000-2001), and a PhD in Technological innovation and Social Change (MIOIR, University of Manchester, UK, 2004-2007). My doctoral research focused on the role of the Internet in civil society activism in Indonesia.

Prior to my stay in the UK I worked with Indonesian civil society organisations (CSOs). I set up, directed, and managed ELSPPAT – Institute for Sustainable Agriculture and Rural Development (1996-1998, currently Chair of Board Members), an advocacy NGO working on the betterment of rural livelihood; I initiated and lead Unisosdem – Uni Sosial Demokrat or Social Democracy Union (1998-2004, currently on leave), a political organisation focusing on political awareness training and education for young activists and political lobby; I established and directed Business Watch Indonesia/BWI (2002-2004, now Senior Advisor), a research NGO conducting research and policy advocacy through lobby on the implications of globalisation for the poor. Currently, in a limited extent, I am also still involved with the works of some Indonesian civil society groups and organisations. I also serve a role as a senior academic advisor for CIPG (Centre for Innovation Policy and Governance), a Jakarta-based advisory group.

Temporarily I am residing in the UK at the moment pursuing my academic interest. My research interests are concerned with technological innovation and in particular the adoption and diffusion of innovations in the third sector (non-governmental and not for profit organisations); innovation and sustainable development; new communication media and social change; and knowledge dynamics. In his first area of research, recent work has been focussed on how technological innovations diffuse in and are adopted by third sector organisations and investigating the impacts of such diffusion/adoption. In the second strand, I focus on the role of innovation in development, particularly in sustainable development and/in developing countries. I investigate factors other than innovation (e.g. democracy, civic engagement, among others) that play important roles in the success of development and pays attention to intermediaries and intermediation process in the systems of innovation. Thirdly, my work on the link between new media and information technologies and social change looks at how new communication technology such as the Internet and Web 2.0 propagates and alters the nature of communication and interaction in the fabric of societal life. Lastly, his interest in knowledge dynamics is reflected in his work on knowledge management, mobility of researchers and impacts of research funding schemes in the European context.

Methodologically, I work both with quantitative and qualitative approaches including Foresight. I have extensive experience in designing,  deploying and analysing large scale off- and on-line surveys; familiar with focus groups and workshops; and social network analysis. I have experience and working knowledge in using statistical applications such as SPSS, Stata; social network analysis including Pajek, UciNet; CAQDAS like Atlas.Ti and NVivo. I have published a number of papers in highly respected journals like Research Policy; Journal of International Development; Information, Communication and Society; Sociological Research Online; International Journal of Emerging Technologies and Social Change and Foresight and for working paper series with Brooks World Poverty Institute, Centre for Research in Economics Social and Cultural Change, and Manchester Business School. You can find my thesis and all the papers in the publication section.

During my work with MIoIR, I have been involved in a relatively big number of European Commission sponsored research projects including: Service Innovation: The Future of R&D Service Innovation in EU (2004-2005); Annual Digest for Industrial Research (2005-2006 and 2006-2007); Prime Forum: Network of Excellence (EU-FP6) (2005-2006); E-Skills Foresight Europe (2006); Mapping Innovation Policy in Services (2006); InnoGRIPS – Pooling of world-wide Knowledge on Innovation Policy and Business Innovation (2007-2010); RINDICATE researcher mobility (2007-2008); iKNOW Wildcards and Weaksignals identification (2008-2011); and most recently MORE research on EU researcher mobility (2008-2011) and EFP project mapping European Foresight Platform (2010-2012). I also joined in the SCI (Sustainable Consumption Institute) funded research on the future of EU biofuels and currently conduct a research evaluating the impact of European Research funding schemes funded by European Research Council. I recently led a HIVOS-funded research on social media and social change in Indonesia.

For full profile, and just in case you are interested in my research area and want to be working with me as colleague or student 🙂 please see my official page in the University of Manchester’s Business School website here.

Contact:

audentis fortuna iuvat
(virgil, virgil, aeneid x.284)