Gerhard has a BA in Social Anthropology and Politics/International Relations and an MA in Social Anthropology from the University of Kent at Canterbury and was awarded a PhD in anthropology and sociology from La Trobe University. From 2014-2017 he was an Australian Research Council DECRA research fellow. In 2023-2024 he is the Lee Kong Chian NUS-Stanford Fellow on Contemporary Southeast Asia 2024 spending time at the National University of Singapore and the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford University.
He conducts research in development studies, on refugee and immigration policy and spiritual and existential security as well as religion and the state. He is a regular commentator in newspapers, radio and online media on topics of his research.
His first book entitled Modern Muslim Identities: Negotiating Religion and Ethnicity in Malaysia is published by NIAS Press. He is co-editor of a volume on human security and Australian foreign policy published by Allen and Unwin/Routledge as well as one on Urban refugees: Challenges in Protection, Services and Policy, published by Routledge.
He is a senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. He is also course director for World101x: Anthropology of current world issues, UQs fifth edX massive open online course. The course offers 9 weeks of anthropological episodes with an array of additional resources, including a host of interviews with fellow anthropologists. There is also a curated list of interviews with anthropologists and panels on the youtube and facebook channel.
Dr Lutfun Nahar Lata is a Lecturer in Sociology and Social Policy in the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Melbourne. Lutfun's primary research area focuses on the Sociology of work and employment including the gig economy and the future of work.
Prior to joining the University of Melbourne, she was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Institute for Social Science Research at the University of Queensland. Currently, Lutfun is an Honorary Research Fellow at the Institute for Social Science Research at the University of Queensland.
She has written about gig economy, urban marginality, poverty governance, housing and place-based disadvantage. She is a mixed-methods researcher with extensive experience in conducting and publishing qualitative, quantitative and digital research and working with multidisciplinary teams that include stakeholders from academia, industry and local and central governments.
Lutfun is the author of Spatial Justice, Contested Governance and Livelihood Challenges in Bangladesh (Routledge 2023). Her research has been published in journals such as Current Sociology, The Sociological Review, Sociology Compass, Gender, Work & Organization, Cities, Geographical Research, Housing Policy Debate, Journal of Contemporary Asia, and Government Information Quarterly.
