James Terry is Professor of Geosciences and Dean of the College of Natural and Health Sciences, at Zayed University in the United Arab Emirates. He received his PhD in Physical Geography in 1992 from the University of Wales in the UK, and thereafter held academic positions at the University of Exeter (UK), the University of the South Pacific (Fiji), Kagoshima University (Japan) and the National University of Singapore.

As a field-based geoscientist, he has over three decades of research experience spanning geomorphology, climatology and hydrology. His main research interests lie in investigating the causes, behaviour and impacts of natural hazards in the Asia-Pacific and Arabian-Mediterranean regions. His work focuses on coastal hazards in particular, such as tsunamis and tropical cyclones. However, he has also published widely across different domains, including: climatic and hydrological extreme events, Holocene records, fluvial processes, karst geomorphology, island landscapes, environmental change, groundwater, hillslope processes, soil erosion and land degradation.

He is an Assistant Editor on the editorial boards of Natural Hazards and Geoscience Letters, both published by Springer Nature.

Present and past professional responsibilities have included, amongst other positions:

• Chair of the International Advisory Board, International Centre of Excellence for Integrated Research on Disaster Risk (IRDR ICoE-Taipei), hosted by Academia Sinica, Taiwan.
• Chair of the Steering Group on Natural Hazards and Disaster Risk, for the International Council of Science, Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific (ICSU-ROAP), hosted by the Malaysian Academy of Sciences.
• Treasurer of the Asia Oceania Geosciences Society.
• President of Interdisciplinary Geosciences section, Asia Oceania Geosciences Society.
• Environmental Working Group member for the Digital Belt and Road (DBAR) Initiative, hosted by the Chinese Academy of Sciences.