Professor Lisa Grocott is a co-design researcher who thrives on collaborating with interdisciplinary teams on social impact and organisational change projects. Lisa is the Co-Director of WonderLab at Monash University and an Honorary Professor of Play at the DSKD in Denmark. Lisa’s relational approach to designing for impact creates perspective-shifting, memory-making, play-based encounters that support the challenging work of shifting social practices and unsettling everyday norms. Drawing on her co-design practice, neurodivergent lived experiences and Indigenous knowing Lisa’s research is always animated by how we might rewrite the stories we tell ourselves and the stories we are told. Born in Aotearoa New Zealand, Lisa is of Ngāti Kahungunu descent on her mother's side, with whakapapa from the United Kingdom on her father's side.

Lisa’s creative methods for transformative shiftwork have been sharpened by collaborating with psychology and education researchers, creative methodologists and ethnographers in Australia, United States, Denmark and Great Britain. Her book Design for Transformative Learning: a Practical Approach to Memory-making and Perspective-shifting speaks to decades of creative research and the science behind designing strong memory traces. The Tomorrow Party project, a co-creative method for policy making and systems change illustrates the power of playful encounters for seeding new imaginaries and forging new possible worlds. Lisa’s expertise in designing for social impact has received $4M+ in funding from Australia Research Council, Wellcome Foundation, Denmark Independent Research Fund, AHRC and many other philanthropy and industry partners committed to recognising that creative practice can play a significant role in the work of making more just and equitable futures. Her organisational change expertise is further informed by decades of leadership roles, including Dean of Academic Initiatives at Parsons in New York and Head of Design at Monash.