Keynote Speakers
Dr Alan Rayner
Alan Rayner is a biologist who uses art, poetry and a new form of mathematics, as well as rigorous science to enquire and communicate about our natural human neighbourhood. He has published over 150 scientific articles, 6 formal scientific books (including Degrees of Freedom: Living in Dynamic Boundaries ) and 6 e-books. He was President of the British Mycological Society in 1998 and has been a Miller Visiting Research professor at the University of California, Berkeley. he has been using a participatory and co-creative approach to introduce and develop his evolutionary understanding of natural inclusion since 2001.
Congress Paper: Sustainability of the Fitting - bringing the philosophical principles of natural inclusion into the educational enrichment of our human neighbourhood
Professor Budd Hall
Budd Hall is the Director of the Office of Community-based Research at the University of Victoria in British Columbia Canada. He is also the secretary of Community-based Research Canada and the Global Alliance for Community Engaged Research. He may be considered an Elder in the field of action research having pioneered work in Tanzania in the early 1970s, later founding the International Participatory Research Network. He served as Secretary General of the International Council for Adult Education for 11 years where he worked with Paulo Freire. Budd participated in the 1976 Cartagena Conference organised by the late Orlando Fals Borda as well as the ALARA event in the same city in 1996. His research and writing are in areas of participatory research, social movement learning, community-university research partnerships and the role of poetry in social change.
Congress Paper: Whose Local? Whose Global? Knowledge, Power and Privilege in a Troubled World
Professor Linda Tuhiwai Smith
Linda Tuhiwai Smith is Professor of Education and Maori Development and Pro-Vice Chancellor Maori at the University of Waikato. She has worked in the field of Maori education for many years as an educator and researcher and is well known for her work in Kaupapa Maori research. Professor Smith has published widely in journals and books. Her book "Decolonising Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples" has been an international bestseller in the Indigenous world since its publication in 1998. More recently Professor Smith was a joint Director of Nga Pae o Te Maramatanga, new Zealand's Maori Centre of Research Excellence and a Professor of Education at the University of Auckland. She is well known internationally as a public speaker. Professor Smith is from two iwi in New Zealand, Ngati Awa and Ngati Porou.
Yoland Wadsworth
Yoland Wadsworth has been involved in PAR since the early 1970s and has written Australia's two bestselling social research and evaluation books based on a PAR approach. The final in the trilogy "Building in Research and Evaluation for Living Human Systems" is to be published in 2010. She is an Adjunct Professor at RMIT University and Principal Fellow at the University of Melbourne and has worked for 38 years with NGOs, government and community organisations, primarily in health and human services. Yoland is a life member and former president of ALARA, founder in 1986 of the Action Research Issues Association (ARIA) and its current convener.
Congress Paper: Action Research for life-an integral epistemology for (truly) living systems.