Research Advisor
Foundations for Tomorrow
10 months | Australia
Portraits of Our Future is a policy futures initiative by Foundations for Tomorrow that explores how lived experience can inform long-term policymaking in Australia. Future policy debates in Australia are often fragmented, short-term in horizon and disconnected from lived experience.
The project develops a structured methodology to integrate lived experience, systemic analysis, intergenerational fairness assessment and speculative futures into actionable policy insight. It presents 15 narrative portraits of Australians from different walks of life, combining personal stories with policy analysis to examine how today’s systems shape long-term societal outcomes.
As a Research Advisor, I led the adaptation and application of Narrative Causal Layered Analysis and curated the policy case studies accompanying each portrait, translating lived experience interviews into structured systems analysis.
Approach
Lived Experience & Narrative Analysis
Analysed lived experience interviews, distilling key themes that surfaced systemic pressures across domains such as housing, work, education, and climate.
Policy & Systems Framing
Situated emerging themes within governance and legislative structures, connecting individual experiences to broader institutional dynamics.
Narrative Causal Layered Analysis
Applied Causal Layered Analysis to trace issues across multiple layers: surface conditions, systemic drivers, underlying worldviews, and deeper narratives shaping policy.
Policy Case Study Development
Researched and curated policy case studies for each portrait, situating lived experience within relevant legislative, institutional, and governance contexts.
This project introduces Future Generations Storylining Analysis (FGSA), a methodology we developed to integrate lived experience with systems thinking and intergenerational fairness frameworks.
Impact
The project produced 15 intergenerational policy portraits that combined lived experience with systemic and policy analysis, offering a new way to connect personal narratives with structural challenges. Through this work, the project developed a replicable analytical sequencing methodology (FGSA) for integrating narrative into policy analysis, demonstrating how lived experience can move from the margins to the centre of policy conversations.
By situating individual experiences within broader governance systems, the work highlighted how narrative analysis can contribute to more reflective and future-oriented policy discussions.
The full Portraits of Our Future report will be published soon.