Dianto is a researcher at the Agrarian Resource Center (ARC), a non-governmental and independent research institute, based in Bandung, Indonesia. He is interested in  topics related to agrarian and environmental justice and movement. 

His current research is about land occupation and agroecology. Beside his activities in research, advocacy, and community organizing, he also teaches political science and international relations in a graduate program at two universities in Indonesia – Padjadjaran University and Paramadina University.

He was a Commissioner and Vice Chair of the National Commission on Human Rights of the Republic of Indonesia, in 2012-2017. He wrote some articles and books, including 24.2: A Manifesto for Forestry Land Reform (2024) and Amid the Vortex of Extractivism: Community- based Palm Oil in Indonesia (2020).

Dianto is now doing research on colonial archives and its position in urban land conflicts in modern Indonesia, which brings him to the Netherlands to search and collect several archives related to this topic. At KITLV he will do research on the transformation of state’s own company’s landed property assets, colonial archives and land conflicts.