Dr. Johari Hussein Nassor Amar (preferred name Johari Amar), is a Lecturer in Property and Leads the Sustainable Built Environments Research Group (SBERG), Faculty of Society and Design, Bond University, Gold Coast, Australia.

This month we touched base with Johari Amar, one of our newest members, to discuss her work on property valuation and heritage protection.

Can you tell us a bit about yourself?

My name is Johari, and I am a Chartered Commercial Property Surveyor (MRICS) and lecturer in property at Bond University. I lead the Sustainable Built Environments Research Group here and also convene our Affordable Housing Think Table. My journey started about 15 years ago as a land economist with Knight Frank in Tanzania, and now I find myself teaching valuation and property subjects to undergraduate and postgraduate students. My research centres on affordable housing, commercial real estate and heritage conservation, often involving digital technologies like AI, LiDAR and drones. I supervise PhD and MPhil students working in these areas and collaborate with colleagues across Australia and internationally. I did my PhD in Sustainable Development here at Bond, my MSc in Real Estate Management at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden and my BSc (Hons) in Land Management back home at the University of Dar es Salaam.

What are you passionate about?

I approach my work with the belief that access to affordable and secure housing is a fundamental human right rather than a market commodity. This shapes both my teaching and research. I see it in the pressures faced by families in housing stress, young people unable to buy homes and older people struggling to adapt their homes for care. These realities highlight the urgency of research that speaks to lived experience and examines how property rights frameworks either enable or constrain housing access.

My interest in housing unsurprisingly extends to built heritage as these structures hold collective memory and reveal how communities have experienced and shaped space over time. I am drawn to how they invite us to look back but also compel us to look ahead. In the context of climate change, heritage and housing together raise critical questions about how we design, manage and adapt the built environment. Achieving greater resilience requires rethinking long-held assumptions about property rights, planning policies and developing climate law that supports this transformation.

That intersection of people, place and property is where I find the most meaningful questions – ones that cross disciplinary boundaries and connect policy, social equity and lived experience.

What are you working on these days?

I am currently working on three main projects. One involves finalising an edited book on AI and digital technologies in property valuation and asset management. It’s a collaborative effort between academics and industry partners exploring how these tools are reshaping valuation practice and professional standards.

Another project is a cross-country study comparing built heritage conservation in Australia and Germany. We are examining how digital integration supports heritage management and adaptive reuse in planning systems with different regulatory and cultural settings. The comparative angle has opened up new questions I had not expected. I am also leading a project on experiential learning in built environment education. We are undertaking a research project based on field trip based assignments across property, planning, project management and construction programs to understand their impact on student learning and graduate readiness. It ties directly into how we prepare students for a complex and rapidly changing professional landscape.

What brings you to PLPR?

I was interested in PLPR after hearing Professor John Sheehan speak about its work on Native Title. As a lecturer in real estate property rights at Bond and a researcher on housing and built heritage, I focus on the legal and institutional settings that shape land use and access. PLPR’s comparative lens on property systems and its blend of planning and law align with how I approach these issues in both teaching and research, making it a fitting forum to learn from other academics working on similar questions of tenure, regulation and community outcomes.

Anecdote: things we don’t know about you?

One thing people may not know is that my academic path has taken me through Tanzania, Sweden and Australia. Each shaped how I understand land, planning and sustainability, from informal tenure systems to collective approaches and institutional frameworks. That mix continues to inform how I think about property, access and the ways land is used and valued across contexts.