Honorary Global Advisor
Prof Dr. Lynn Crawford
Award-winning Researcher, Author, Educator
Hon Fellow APM (UK), IPMA (global)
Life Fellow, AIPM (Australia)
Founder/Director, Global Alliance for the Project Professions (GAPPS)
Hon Professor, University of Sydney
Sydney, Australia
Dr. Lynn Crawford has been a leading advocate for project management as a discipline and profession since the late 1990s. She played a pivotal role in the formation of the Global Alliance for the Project Professions (GAPPS). At the University of Sydney, she oversaw the establishment of the School of Project Management within the Faculty of Engineering, marking a significant milestone in the recognition of project management as an academic discipline.
Lynn engages actively in project management practice, education, and research at a global level. From a practice perspective, she worked for over two decades with major corporations and government agencies to build project and program management capability and to foster the sharing of knowledge and best practices through international knowledge networks.
Her ongoing research includes areas such as project and program management competence, project governance, project-based work and careers, management of business change, variations in project practices across sectors, and the relationship between productivity and wellbeing in project and team-based work. She led the Australian contribution to an international study on The Value of Project Management, with a focus on governance. Completed research projects have been published as:
- Project Categorization Systems: Aligning Capability with Strategy for Better Results
- Situational Sponsorship of Projects and Programs: An Empirical Review
- Exploring the Complexity of Projects: Implications of Complexity Theory for Project Management Practice
- Project Management and Organizational Change
- Best Industry Outcomes
Lynn is an Honorary Fellow of the Association for Project Management (UK) and recipient of its Sir Monty Finniston Award for lifetime achievement. She is also a Life Fellow of the Australian Institute of Project Management and an Honorary Fellow of IPMA. From 2004 to 2016, she served as a Director of the Project Management Institute’s Global Accreditation Center. In 2011, she received the IPMA Research Achievement Award, and in 2019, she and her team were honoured with an IPMA Global Outstanding Research Contribution Award for their work on project-based work and careers.
After more than a decade as Director of the Project Management Program and serving in various leadership roles, including Interim Head during the formation of the School of Project Management, Lynn continues to support the School, the Faculty of Engineering and The University of Sydney as an Honorary Professor.
Profile created June 2025