Dr Lisa Smith is a Research Associate with the Education Futures Academy, where she co-leads the qualitative research team within a program of university-school partnered research. Her work focuses on equitable schooling practices and improving schooling and higher education outcomes for students living in disadvantaged communities. Prior to working at UniSA, she was a secondary school teacher and leader in the South Australian Department for Education.

Lisa’s work is predominantly informed by critical pedagogy, critical policy studies, and sociological theory to understand the social conditions that shape teachers’ and leaders’ work and students’ educational experiences. At the EFA, she brings this lens to collaborative projects with schools and industry partners, where a pragmatic and responsive approach is taken to navigate local challenges and co-construct context-sensitive opportunities for change.

Lisa also leads developmental evaluation work that supports research-informed decision-making and continuous improvement. Drawing on Pragmatic Adaptive Modelling and value creation cycles, this work supports partners to surface system-level tensions and enablers, make sense of complexity, and identify aspects of the system where change is required.