Jon Coaffee holds a Professor in Urban Geography in the Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies (CIM) in the Social Sciences Faculty at the University of Warwick.

Prior to this he held a Chair in Spatial Planning and Urban Resilience at the University of Birmingham where he was the Director of the Centre for Urban and Regional Studies. He also held faculty positions at the Universities of Newcastle and Manchester in urban regeneration, architecture and town planning where he has developed and taught on Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI) accredited courses.

His research focuses upon the interplay of physical and sociopolitical aspects of urban resilience and he has also published widely, especially on the impact of terrorism and other security concerns on the functioning of urban areas. During this research he has worked closely with a range of private and governmental stakeholders to ensure his research has real world impact. This work has been published in multiple disciplinary areas such as geography, town planning, political science and civil engineering. most notably he published Terrorism Risk and the City (2003), The Everyday Resilience of the City (2008), Terrorism Risk and the Global City : Towards Urban Resilience (2009) and Sustaining and Securing the Olympic City (2011). His work has been supported by a significant number of EU and UK Research Council grants.