Liam Smith

Associate Professor, Director and co-founder of BehaviourWorks Australia (BWA)

Since establishing BWA in 2011, he has overseen significant growth and the research group now consists of 28, mostly academic, staff. Liam is committed to drawing on leading behavioural science insights to help solve the problems that face society, and making BWA a bridge between academic research and practical real-world solutions.

He does this in many ways including conducting / overseeing over 250 behaviour change research projects in collaboration with industry and government partners, publishing reports, research papers and public discussion pieces and overseeing the development of a raft of education initiatives such as a Master’s unit on behaviour change, executive education programs, establishing a large PhD cohort working with government on behaviour change projects and, in 2018, the development of a behaviour change MOOC for the United Nations Sustainable Development Academy.

Liam’s primary research interest is human behaviour and he has investigated several behavioural antecedents including emotion, attitudes, norms and values. He has published nearly 50 peer- reviewed journal papers and book chapters and authored and co-authored close to 100 project reports on human behaviour and behaviour change.

He sits on numerous committees / Boards including Monash’s Sustainable Development Institute executive, Zoos Victoria’s Science Committee, South East Water’s Customer Engagement Council, VicHealth’s Leading Thinker Taskforce and is on the Board of Directors for Inclusive Australia.