Gabrielle is a Senior Adviser in the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet (PM&C), with 18 years' experience across 10 APS agencies in roles ranging from strategic policy advice to direct service delivery.

Gabrielle is completing her PhD at The Australian National University, exploring the role of lived experience knowledge in social security policy making. Her research responds to a critical challenge facing the Australian Public Service: growing public expectations for inclusive policy processes alongside the need for deeper, more diverse forms of evidence to address complex policy problems.

As a critical policy scholar, Gabrielle focuses on areas where people's voices have been traditionally marginalised. By examining structural barriers and enablers to meaningful inclusion of lived experience knowledge, her research will provide practical frameworks to transform how governments engage with people impacted by policy choices, equipping policy makers to design policies that genuinely respond to the needs of the public we serve.

Supervisor: Professor Janine O'Flynn

Publications

• Lawrence G. (3 July 2025). ‘Epistemic hierarchies and silenced voices: A WPR analysis of lived experience knowledge exclusion in social security and unemployment policy in Australia’. [Conference presentation]. 7th International Conference on Public Policy, Chaing Mai, Thailand.
• Lawrence G. (9 February 2025). ‘Why is lived experience absent from welfare and unemployment policy in Australia: a critical policy examination’. [Conference presentation]. Australian Social Policy Association Higher Degree by Research Conference, Canberra, Australia.