Ashleigh Morse & Iseult Cremen (NSW Department of Customer Service)

Abstract

Ashleigh Morse and Iseult Cremen from the NSW BIU will show how behavioural insights has been used to drive better customer experience and improved outcomes in key Government priorities over the past decade. Using case studies from the NSW Behavioural Insights Unit, they will illustrate the evolution of behavioural insights from ‘nudges’ to data-driven solutions to support regulation and policy design.

Bios

Dr Ashleigh Morse is a Senior Behavioural Advisor in the NSW Behavioural Insights Unit, where she has worked since March 2022. She completed her Bachelor of Psychology (Hons) at Sydney University in 2012, and her PhD in behavioural neuroscience in 2017. In her PhD, she investigated the role of delta-opioid receptors on cholinergic interneurons in the nucleus accumbens shell in mediating specific Pavlovian-Instrumental Transfer (PIT). She then worked as a postdoctoral researcher in the Wassum Lab at the University of California, Los Angeles, where she used optogenetics and activity-dependent gene expression techniques to locate specific reward memories in the basolateral amygdala. Ash left academia and spent two years working in the Sydney office of the Behavioural Insights Team, where she learned to apply a range of research methods to public policy areas from education to justice. She then worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the Matilda Centre for Research in Substance Use and Mental Health (USyd) to develop a new model of care to help emergency services workers in NSW manage alcohol and other drug use.

Dr Iseult Cremen is a project manager at the NSW Behavioural Insights Unit (BIU). Iseult is currently leading the BIU’s work on Gender and Behavioural Insights. Prior to her role in the NSW Government, Iseult worked as a behavioural science consultant and researcher at both The Behavioural Architects and The Behavioural Insights Team in Sydney, working on a range of behavioural challenges with public sector clients. Iseult has led field experiments and research projects in the areas of gender and diversity, transport, energy and the environment, industry and health.

Iseult has long been passionate about behaviour change for good using experimental and empirical research approaches. She holds a BA and a PhD in Psychology from Trinity College Dublin. Iseult chose to pursue a career in behavioural insights due to its applicability to real-world contexts and exploring outcomes using in-context evaluations.