While teaching high school in Perth's suburbs, he obtained a First Class Honours degree in Southeast Asian Studies at Murdoch University in 1978.

He was the team leader on the UNICEF Laos rural sanitation and water supply masterplan (1991), and also worked as an advisor on social and community issues for the Australian Agency for International Development in 1996–98, while on leave from UNE.

In late 2000, he relocated to Hong Kong to become professor and director of City University's Southeast Asia Research Centre.

[3] In 2017, he spent January to July as a visiting research scholar at the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at Kyoto University.

[4] In May 2018, he was visiting guest professor with the department of political science and Forum for Asian Studies at Stockholm University.