Dr Gail Kenning is Senior Research Fellow at fEEL (felt Experience and Empathy Lab), Big Anxiety Research Centre (BARC), UNSW,  The Big Anxiety (TBA) and Research Associate Ageing Futures Institute (AFI), she is co-founder of Skilled Companions Pty Limited and has an arts and design practice which includes psychosocial design socially engaged projects, participatory engagement and co-design.

She is a key team member of Skilled Companions and BARC in the development of Lived Experience (LE) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) supported embodied character companions providing psychosocial support in relation to trauma, mental health, loneliness, dementia, anxiety in relation to falls, and disordered eating. Building on the work of fEEL Viv and friends, trials are currently taking place with lived experience participants funded by a range of research and industry grants including Australian Research Council and AEA Ignite.

At BARC/fEEL Gail worked on psychosocial immersive media and video projects including World Comes Alive launched at Tavistock/Portman NHS London June 2025, and award winning Perinatal Dreaming, Space for Action, The visit and EmbodiMap, We’re just gonna call it all BPD.

She co-produced and was lead researcher on To Whom I May Concern a performance collaboration with Australian Chamber Orchestra with five performances at ACO on the Pier, Walsh Bay, Sydney in 2022 and 2023. The importance of this work has been acknowledged by Dementia Australia.

In her art practice she uses drawing to uncover the psychosocial experiences of mark-making. Her research design practice focuses on older people, dementia, mental health and trauma intergenerational practice. She was part of an international team developing amongst the first social robots for dementia. She works with and consults to the Art Gallery of New South Wales co-developing the Art and Dementia program and PAUSE a program for carers in Palliative Care, in partnership with Palliative Care NSW. She is working with War Memorial Hospital to explore anxiety in relation to falls and has developed VR nature and wellbeing experiences for communities in the Woollahra Municipal Council area.

Kenning has developed co-design and psychosocial practices for people with dementia including for advanced stages (supported and published by Alzheimer’s Society UK) that involve participatory workshops, storytelling, and creative making. arts-based discussion and use of Visual Matrix (Kenning, 2022, Froggett, Manley, & Roy, 2015). She engages in a range of qualitative and psychosocial methods and phenomenological/deep listening analysis approaches and has advised on how qualitative data can inform the development of clinical trials involving social and creative engagements.

Kenning has over 100 publications consisting of articles, conference papers, a book and book chapters in industry and academic journals related to psychosocial design, HCI and design, co-creation arts-based projects in relation to mental health and trauma, ageing and dementia, arts-based evaluation and methodologies.

She has affiliations with NeuRA UNSW, Cardiff Metropolitan University, Eindhoven University and University of Technology Sydney and is secretary of the Arts Health Network NSW and ACT (AHNNA).