DrPhillippa Carnemolla

ARC DECRA Research Fellow 2025-7

Theme Lead of the UTS Ageing Research Collaborative (Design and Innovation)

Academic Lead of the UTS Disability Research Network

Phillippa Carnemolla is a Professor in the School of Built Environment within the Faculty of Design Architecture and Building. She is passionate about research that investigates the influence of our built environments on people's independence, autonomy and how care is provided and received. She focuses on promoting community-led research and innovation in housing, workplaces, residential aged care, specialist disability accommodation and inclusive cities across aged care and disability support contexts. 

Phillippa leads work commissioned by the National Disability Insurance Agency, state government agencies and departments across NSW, Tasmania and Victoria, The Big Issue and service providers of disability support and aged care. She has held a number of national board and advisory positions with organisations, including the Centre for Universal Design Australia, the City of Sydney, the Greater Cities Commission and NSW Department of Planning. In recognition of her research excellence in housing and care provision, she is a Uniting Research Fellow, Honorary Associate Professor at Edith Cowan University and a finalist in the AFR Tertiary Education Awards (2022).

International Recognition
Her transdisciplinary research is recognised globally, with many international governments and agencies citing her work as evidence for policy innovation and reform across housing and care. The US Senate has tabled her research as part of a 2022 hearing before the committee on addressing the housing needs of American seniors. The World Health Organisation (UNICEF) cites her investigations into the breadth of health, care and social impacts resulting from inclusive design approaches (2022). The UK Government Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities cites her review on housing and homelessness in their report, testing innovative approaches to improving outcomes for people experiencing homelessness (2023). Closer to home, her research into models of aged care is cited in the 2023 National Aged Care Design Principles and Guidelines.

Community-led research
Phillippa oversees projects in housing, aged care, and disability, fostering collaborations among a wide array of stakeholders, including Australia’s leading housing and disability support/aged care providers (Uniting, Achieve Australia, and Northcott). She is recognised within academic, industry and community sectors for her exemplary community-centred approach, having led diverse research teams that prioritise the inclusion of people with disability as project leaders, researchers, strategists, and analysts. Her leadership of the ‘My Home My Community project’ was recently referenced in the UTS application to the Australian Elective Carnegie Community Engagement Classification. The case study included in the application highlighted Assoc. Prof Carnemolla’s leadership in designing and delivering engaged research and practice. Of significant value was her ability to guide a diverse team of researchers, including people with intellectual disability. By embedding diversity and inclusion at the heart of the project, the research effectively demonstrated the integration of diverse forms of knowledge – including disciplinary, contextual, and lived experience – to further the field. This contribution, complemented by other institutional examples of engaged scholarship, resulted in UTS being awarded the Classification in 2023. This was a significant achievement, with UTS being one of the only two institutions receiving the Classification nationally.

Specialist Disability Accommodation Research 2023
In 2023 she lead the analysis of exclusive Australian national housing data on the National Disability Insurance Scheme’s (NDIS) Specialist Disability Accommodation (SDA) housing stock. Bringing together a national team of housing and disability academics and experts, including people with disability, the team developed inclusive data translations for people with sensory disability (blind and visually impaired) and intellectual disability for the state-based data being analysed.