Gillian Squirrell is a broad-based applied social scientist working across fields including: education, management, social policy, sociology and criminology. This capacity to effectively straddle disciplinary boundaries has enabled the development of expertise within and across several areas of public service policy development and the non-profit sector.

Gillian Squirrell has undertaken several national consultations and research programs leading to policy development. She specializes in complex, multi-site evaluation research with multiple stakeholders, often as longitudinal studies and with harder to reach groups. Her organizational development work is with non-profits and public sector services working in welfare areas following the principles of process consultancy and geared to capacity building.

Throughout her career Gillian Squirrell has been committed to the iterative relationship of academic and empirically derived knowledge, its applications and subsequent development in the field. This commitment shapes approaches to research, using, for example, participatory research methods and action research, and to ways of working with research participants. This commitment has informed areas of work which have been undertaken, for example, researching social inclusion and the role of universities in civil society.

Gillian Squirrell’s commitment to working with research findings and using them to inform practice
inspired her to found and the subsequent development of a non-profit, providing accommodation, learning and employment opportunities to ex-offenders.

Gillian Squirrell has been researching the role of university-community partnerships and engagement. This research has informed the development work of universities seeking to improve their relationships with the various communities with which they interact. She has been working with scientists and engineers on developing their public engagement and communication practices.

Gillian Squirrell has a lengthy career within the university sector, 20 years to date as well as management experience in the non-profit sector. She has a good understanding of universities as organizational cultures and structures and expertise in working with them in a variety of change situations they consistently confront.