Research Working Group

IAP2 Australasia has an established Research Working Group (RWG) dedicated to furthering IAP2 Australasia’s commitment to becoming the ‘go-to organisation for resources, research and advice.’

Key Research Interests

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Our key research interests for 2024 include:

• Use of new technologies and platforms such as AI and gamification.
• Examining what more inclusive engagement practices require, especially in terms of more intersectional approaches.
• Exploring organisational preparedness including how to better equip organisations to create value and benefits from engagement practices.
• Sharing knowledge that identifies key features of co-design and its benefits.

Past Projects

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Past projects the RWG have worked on include:

• Case Study Template: This was incorporated into the IAP2 Australasia Core Values Awards entry submissions. View the Case Study Library.
• Practitioner Notes: Hybrid Engagement and Designing and Delivering a Best Practice Survey, these are available for IAP2 Australasia Members to download via the Resource Library.

Members

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Emanuela Savini (Chair)

Emanuela is a researcher and participatory democracy professional. She is committed to supporting citizen-led action and exploring how citizens can have more influence over public policy decision-making. She is currently researching deliberative engagement practices with a focus on how to build capacity in government organisations for more participatory processes.

Emanuela is also the Director of The Public Value Studio, an organisation committed to increasing civic participation. Her practice is based on the deep belief that recognising the tacit knowledge and expertise of communities is fundamental to bringing about the change we want to see in our cities, and society more broadly. She facilitates programs such as the Democracy Lab and is currently the Chair of the IAP2A Research Working Group.

Dr Robyn Cochrane (Deputy Chair)

Dr. Robyn Cochrane is Director/Lead Researcher of Cochrane Research Solutions, a home-based research consultancy business. Robyn is highly qualified and has extensive experience in research, policy, planning and training roles across education, local government and community settings. Robyn provides a variety of research and consulting services to inform evidence based decision-making.

She has worked collaboratively to produce Community Visions, a range of Council plans, masterplans and strategies and has successfully evaluated services and programs. Areas of expertise include benchmarking, literature reviews, engagement design, survey design, data collation, data analysis and reporting. Empowering communities is at the heart of Robyn’s work and volunteer pursuits.

In 2022 she was awarded Outstanding Citizen of the Year by the City of Kingston in recognition of her contribution to the community. Robyn is committed to advancing the practice of community and stakeholder engagement.

Billy Kwan

Billy obtained both his undergraduate and master’s degree in Urban Planning from the Bartlett School of Planning, University College London, and has more than 14 years of experience in urban and spatial planning, placemaking, stakeholders engagement and social design in Asia. He is a co-founder and Principal of Rhindon, a strategic design consultancy based in Singapore.

With his diverse experience in architectural practices, the private sector, NGO and academia, he adopts a holistic approach to the understanding and addressing of complex urban problems that foster collaboration and partnership of different stakeholders as part of a co-creation process.

Before setting up Rhindon, Billy was General Manager of a CapitaLand consortium that led the formation of the Raffles Place Business Improvement District in Singapore. He has previously led a Hong Kong-based award-winning social design studio and a non-profit NGO, recognised for creative placemaking with a community-centric approach. Billy led and curated community design and placemaking programmes in Hong Kong, which more than 30,000 people attended, and was awarded Perspective’s “40 Under 40” in the Architecture category in 2014.

Billy received his Certificate of Engagement from the International Association for Public Participation Australasia in 2020. He is an Associate Lecturer at the Singapore University of Social Sciences and has been a guest speaker at various universities and conferences in SE Asia. As a hobbyist food writer, he is currently based in Singapore.

Dr Edilene Lopes McInnes

Dr Edilene Lopes McInnes is a public health/social researcher with a background in journalism, public relations and management based at the University of Adelaide (Australia). Currently, she is working on an NHRMC project to improve community trust, acceptance, and adoption of stem cell-based therapies in Australia.

Her research relates to innovative ways to engage diverse stakeholder institutional decisions (projects, policies, and other types of initiatives) in various sectors (academic, governmental or private). Dr Edilene is interested in the research, implementation and evaluation of engagement strategies that incorporate the values and perspectives of all stakeholders to improve decision-making processes.

Addressing inequality through increasing participation and listening to diverse perspectives is what she hopes to achieve with her work.

When she is not working, Edilene loves to walk her dog, go trekking and rock climbing, and travel and explore new places with her family and friends.

Dr Robyn Mitchell

Senior Community Engagement Officer at Melton City Council.

Priya Narsey

B.Bus (Administration), specialising in Marketing and Communication.

Priya is Market Research Manager with over 15 years in the market research profession. Priya has partnered with many private and government organisations across Australia and the United States of America.  Priya’s behavioural and social research experience includes project planning, sampling and survey design, data collection, researcher staff training and management, data analysis, reporting and overall project management.  Priya is a full member of the Australian Research Society, a member of IAP2 Australasia, and a member of the IAP2 Australasia Research Working Group. She is also the lead responsible for adhering to the ISO 20252 certification guidelines.

Stu Reeve

Bachelor of Arts (University of Sydney).

Stu has 30 years’ qualitative and quantitative research experience across a broad range of industries and topics.

He is the co-owner of Micromex Research, and since 2010 Stu has been involved in community consultation and research for circa 100+ government organisations. In that time he has developed research products and formed close industry contacts with both government and partner organisation. In 2017 he was one of the key note speakers at LGNSW’s annual conference.

At Micromex, Stu uses qualitative and quantitative community engagement and research to inform and assist the development of better community outcomes. As a category consultant he is more interested in the meaning of the outcomes, rather than the process of research. He has been a member of the IAP2 Australasia Research Working Group since its inception, and is keenly interested in advocating the values and benefits research and engagement bring.

Stu lives on the Sydney’s northern beaches and enjoys trail and distance running, speculative fiction, and a strong coffee and a beer to bookend a day.

Merryn Spencer

Merryn is an accomplished practitioner with extensive experience managing complex stakeholders. Appreciating the importance of relationships and how they reflect the level of trust and respect between parties, she is passionate about the complementary practices of research and engagement.

Merryn is also an experienced social and market researcher, soliciting opinions and reporting with extensive qualitative and quantitative experience across the planning, energy and infrastructure disciplines.

Dr Kate Sewell

Dr Kate Sewell is an urban development and stakeholder engagement specialist. She has worked in NGO’s, central and local government, and international development in the Asia-Pacific region for more than 15 years in various capacities as both staff and/ or consultant. She has a PhD in urban geography focusing on processes, practices, and outcomes of urban renewal in Hong Kong and a master’s degree in international development.

Kate has extensive experience in strategic planning, research and analysis, project management, community consultation and engagement, facilitation, co-design, monitoring and evaluation, writing and presenting to diverse interest groups, including government agencies, civil society, and academics.

Currently, Kate is the Manager of the Strategic Engagement and Partnerships team for the Northern Region at the New Zealand Electoral Commission. Recently, she led the design and development of the regional and local community engagement plans and tracking system for the 2023 general election. Prior to this, she was contracted by the New Zealand Human Rights Commission to lead the development of their engagement framework. Kate has a special interest in urban development and indigenous engagement processes and practices.

Kate is a mum to three kids and a lover of the outdoors. Going on multiday tramps with her kids to explore Aotearoa/New Zealand’s beautiful bush and mountain ranges is her happy place.  

Linley Bertram

Linley has worked across market research and marketing roles since 2004 after completing a degree in Marketing at UniSA. Her marketing experience has been predominately in the construction and new homes industry, in both internal marketing roles and on agency side, consulting to builders and small trade businesses in Adelaide.

Her market research expertise, built in national and state-based agencies includes expansive work across the education and health sectors, branding and advertising, and local and state Government. The move from agency to local government was inspired by a project with City of Playford that she worked on while in an agency role.

Her desire to apply the research insights into the organisation and lead the work from scoping to implementation, lead her to her Community Insights role at City of Playford, a local Council in the northern suburbs of South Australia. She is currently Acting Manager – Community Insights leading her team in community engagement, community and customer experience, exploratory research and data governance.

Outside of work she is a passionate spectator and coach at her children’s football and netball, loves her coffee, red wine and chocolate all balanced with a bit of outdoor adventure and holidays!

Dr Shan Kariyawasam

Dr. Shan Kariyawasam is a Senior Strategic Planner at the City of Gold Coast, specialising in urban economics, urban planning, cluster development, infrastructure financing, and participatory planning. In 2015, as part of his PhD research, he developed the “Complex Stakeholder Perception Mapping – CSPM” tool for multi stakeholder infrastructure evaluation and monitoring.

Dr. Shan has extensive experience working with diverse groups in the Asian context as a planning consultant for development aid agencies, including the Asian Development Bank, UN-Habitat, the World Bank, and World Vision. He has significantly contributed to the body of knowledge in urban development through over 20 peer-reviewed publications, serving as a reviewer for several journals, and holding a senior academic position at the Department of Town & Country Planning, University of Moratuwa.

Shan is keen to apply his expertise in data analytics to explore innovative tools, such as Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, for public consultation data analysis.

Mandy Griffiths

With a background in strategic communication, social media, content creation and issues management within a PR agency environment, Mandy joined the Department of Premier and Cabinet in 2018 in Multicultural Affairs. When the pandemic began in March 2020, Mandy was a founding member of the DPC COVID Communications team, before leading the communications and engagement response for multicultural communities when the CALD Communities Taskforce was formed in August 2020. In that time, the team created new channels of engagement and new ways of working to improve access to information for all Victorians. Mandy received an IPAA Top 50 Public Sector Women award in recognition of this work.   

Mandy is now the Head of Stakeholder Engagement at the Department of Families, Fairness and Housing where she has expanded her focus from multicultural communities to all communities facing barriers to participation and engagement. She is particularly interested in exploring intersectionality and ways to address and remove discrimination and inequality from our institutions and settings.

Steven Germain

Steven is the Co-Founder and CEO of Communiti Labs, a software start-up that provides advanced analytics for engagement practitioners and teams.

One of the precursors to starting Communiti Labs in 2023 was an extended period of research interviews with community engagement practitioners from varying professional backgrounds and parts of the world. This ongoing research has informed an approach to leveraging technology, including artificial intelligence, in capacity building for hybrid engagement practice. The Communiti Labs data analytics platform helps engagement teams to collate survey and feedback data. Using mixed methods, insights are discovered and then converted to actionable strategies via an integrated reporting tool.

Steven is a migrant to Australia, originally from Canada, and is passionate about engagement practice through the lens of accessibility, inclusivity, diversity and resilience. Topics around population trends, migration pathways and related service and infrastructure forecasting are of great interest. How might we listen to our shifting populations and make them feel welcome in our decision-making processes?

Steven has a bachelor’s degree in Communication Studies, and a professional career focused around innovation, product development and project management. He spends his personal time reading sci-fi, surfing and hanging out with his family.

Upcoming events

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Take a look at our upcoming webinars, via the IAP2A Webinar Calendar.

Find a local network event, via the IAP2A Local Network Events Calendar.