Dr Dave McRae

Dave McRae is a Senior Research Fellow in the Asia Institute at the University of Melbourne. He has researched conflict, politics, democratisation, and human rights issues in Indonesia for well over a decade.

Dave McRae is a Senior Research Fellow in the Asia Institute at the University of Melbourne. He has researched conflict, politics, democratisation, and human rights issues in Indonesia for well over a decade.

He wrote his PhD at the Australian National University on post-authoritarian inter-religious violence in Indonesia, explaining why civil-war-like violence could suddenly occur in a previously quiescent region. He also holds a Bachelor of Asian Studies (Specialist–Indonesian) with honours and university medal from the ANU, and speaks fluent Indonesian.

He is the author of A Few Poorly Organised Men: Interreligious Violence in Poso, Indonesia (2013) and translator of Solahudin's The Roots of Terrorism in Indonesia (2013).

From 2011 until January 2014, Dave was a Research Fellow in the East Asia Program at the Lowy Institute, covering Indonesia and Southeast Asia. As Lead Researcher for the World Bank's Conflict and Development Team in Indonesia between 2008 and 2010, he led a research program on interventions to prevent conflict and address its impacts. Prior to this, he worked for the Jakarta office of the International Crisis Group between 2004 and 2006, researching and writing reports on most of Indonesia's major conflict areas.