AN Aboriginal social worker’s research will set out new groundwork for policy among the public service in communicating with indigenous staff and customers.

The year’s work earned ANU student Lisa Conway the coveted Sir Roland Wilson Foundation Pat Turner PhD scholar award in bridging the cultural gap.

The research aims to ensure cultural responsiveness underpins policy and decision-making in Canberra’s federal civil service.

Ms Conway said the term of cultural responsiveness is a “respectful, helpful and relatively simple approach” that builds on cultural awareness and is also a “way to build a better understanding of the perspectives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders”.

“The work I am doing will improve workplace conditions for Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander public servants,” Ms Conway said.

“Where the benefits for the local mob is they’re the ones who are employed in Canberra the most where all the jobs are.

“So it’s about them having a better workplace so other workers and executives will be more culturally responsive and work with them better.”

The trailblazing academic work required other Aboriginal leaders to share their knowledge for the PhD work so it was “recognised and valued” by the university.

Ms Conway hopes the research will guide initiatives and employment strategies aimed to ensure more of the indigenous communities take on leadership roles in the public service.

“That’s because we get this imposter syndrome, where you feel like you are just not good enough,” she said.

The research opportunity has also led the Yorta Yorta woman to organise an undergraduate elective in indigenous peoples, populations and community at ANU.

The hands-on approach that deals mostly with non-indigenous uni students remains in line with a mother-of-four’s pragmatic philosophy after once living through crises.

“There is no good of doing a PhD if it’s going to sit on a shelf and collect dust,” Ms Conway said.

“I really want to make a difference and have an impact on how the APS do things, so the more accolades means I can be more influential when I’m heard.”

The first person in her family to not only finish high school but later on to earn a university degree was once forced to live alone in her car until she found a simple Centrelink job after the birth of her first child that over the years turned into a scholarship to study social work.

Drawing on life experiences from her own family when her parents lived in state care early on before her father turned to living on the streets by age 13 is a brutal reminder.

“Based on my own experiences, what it has told me was that as someone teaching you can have a really big impact on somebody’s life and I wanted to make sure I did that in a real positive way,” Ms Conway said.

“I have actually targeted the indigenous students because I guess I am really conscious of how I felt coming in as an indigenous person in the schooling system and what that means how you can be treated.”