Scholarships & funding

USYD-UofG Collaborative PhD Scholarship - Designing Policy with Lived Experience: Visualisation, Storytelling, and the Production of Policy Knowledge

Project details

This PhD investigates how design-led approaches can reshape the epistemic foundations of policymaking, enabling lived experience to become a more active, legitimate and generative form of policy knowledge. Whilst there is growing recognition that effective and equitable policy should reflect the experiences of those impacted, lived experience is often incorporated in limited or extractive ways. Simultaneously, policymaking is increasingly structured around data practices that privilege abstraction, marginalising experiential, relational, and situated forms of knowing.

This project seeks to understand and prototype novel approaches to designing policy with lived experience. Building on existing links between Sydney Policy Lab (SPL) and the Centre for Public Policy the project will embed design-led interventions within existing research initiatives that have explicit policy aims and strong community engaged focai. At SPL, projects will be selected from across four core programs: Communities and Universities, Good Childhood, Inequalities and Poverty, and Australia's Relational Economy, each of which explores how policy, institutions, and everyday life interact. At the CPP, the policy labs will build upon existing work on poverty and inequality, examining how fragmented policy systems shape social outcomes, and the use of composite story methodology grounded in lived experience.

Design is positioned as a mediating practice capable of producing new policy spaces in which different forms of knowledge can meet, be negotiated and shape policy together. Drawing on the disciplinary expertise of the Sydney School of Architecture, Design and Planning, the project will employ visual mapping, storytelling and co-design to examine how lived experience is articulated, visualised, legitimised, and translated within policy systems.

The project brings together scholarship on public engagement, policy design, participatory governance, design ethnography, data visualisation and narrative theory. It considers visual storytelling and design not as neutral communication tools but as epistemic and political drivers that shape what is seen, valued and acted upon in policy.

Supervisory Team

Principal Supervisor: Associate Professor Leigh-Anne Hepburn (USYD)

Secondary Supervisor(s): Dr Kate Harrison Brennan (USYD), Dr Claire MacRae (UofG) & Professor Nicola McEwan (UofG)

About the School/Research Unit

The Sydney School of Architecture, Design and Planning hosts a dynamic community of research groups who respond to contemporary challenges through expertise in architecture, design, and urbanism, including the Civic and Social Design Research Group who explore how design shapes equitable, inclusive, and participatory futures. This PhD is also supported through partnership with Sydney Policy Lab, a multidisciplinary institute that brings community members and academics together to set the agenda for transformative public policy.

Based in the College of Social Sciences (CoSS), the Centre for Public Policy (CPP) at the University of Glasgow brings together experts across disciplines, sectors and communities to help policymakers deal with the many challenges they face by connecting research, policy and practice. The Centre brings together a diverse community of researchers and affiliates who examine complex policy challenges such as climate change, economy, poverty and inequality, migration, public administration, multi level governance, and intergovernmental relations. 

Eligibility

Applicants must meet the following eligibility criteria

• Applicants will have a a First Class Honours degree, or Master's by Research with outstanding results (at least 80%) [or overseas equivalent].
• Applicants must be able to study full-time basis only.
• Applicants must have a demonstratable interest in the topic area under investigation.
• Applicants must be able to commit to enrolling/registering on PhD programmes at both institutions simultaneously and spend time physically based at each institution during the PhD.
• Successful applicants must be physically based at USYD for commencement of the Collaborative PhD.

Please note that all applicants must also meet the entry requirements for the Doctor of Philosophy (Architecture, Design and Planning) [USYD] and the Social & Public Policy, PhD [UofG]. 

Number of Scholarships

1

Value

The scholarship is available as a full-time +3 (3 year) PhD programme only. The programme will commence in January 2027. The funding is provided by USYD and includes:

• An annual stipend valued at 42,754 p.a. (2026 rate) via a UPA for domestic students or USYDIS for international students;
• Tuition fees covered by RTP fee offset for domestic students or covered by University of Sydney Tuition fee scholarship for international students;
• A one-off Sydney Global Mobility Joint PhD Travel Scholarship ($5000 AUD)

Additionally, the UofG's College of Social Sciences will provide a Fee Waiver to cover the tuition fees for the UofG PhD programme.

Other information

The successful candidate's home institution will be the University of Sydney, where year one and three will be spent. Year two will be spent at the University of Glasgow. 

How to apply

Application process

Applicants must apply via the Scholarships Application Portal (please see Scholarships Application Portal - Applicant Guide for more information). The funding opportunity is under 'College of Social Sciences Postgraduate Research Funding > COSS-25-015'), uploading the following documentation:

• USYD-UofG Scholarship - Designing Policy with Lived Experience application form (in Word format)
• Academic transcripts (All relevant Undergraduate and Master’s level degree transcripts (and translations, if not originally in English) – provisional transcripts are sufficient if you are yet to complete your degree).
• Academic Prizes
• Contact details for two referees (where possible your referees should include an academic familiar with your work (within the last 5 years). Both referees can be academics but you may include a work referee, especially if you have been out of academia for more than 5 years). Please note, a CoSS PGR Funding Reference template will be sent to your referees for completion)*. Note that no member of this project's supervisory team can act as your referee. Please see CoSS PGR Funding Reference request guide for further guidance
• Curriculum Vitae (CV) (academic where applicable)

*Please note that when you enter your referees contact details on the Scholarships Application Portal and send the reference request, your referees are expected to provide their references by the closing date of the Scholarship (below). It is strongly recommended you complete this as soon as possible, as late or incomplete applications will not be considered.

Closing Date: 21 April 2026

References from referees are due no later than 28 April 2026

Selection process

Applications will be assessed by the project team. Shortlisted applicants may be requested to attend an Interview.

All scholarship awards are subject to candidates successfully securing admission to a PhD programmes in USYD's Sydney School of Architecture, Design and Planning and UofG's Centre for Public Policy. Successful applicants will be invited to apply for admission to the relevant PhD programmes after they are selected for funding.

Contact details

Questions on the project: Associate Professor Leigh-Anne Hepburn or Dr Claire MacRae

Questions on the Scholarships Application Portal only: College of Social Sciences Graduate School