Captures and systematises new insights into the relationship between social permaculture and academic research arising from a research collaboration between the Anthropology Department at Durham University and the Durham Local Food Network, brokered by Transition Durham

In 2009 and 2010, while I was lecturing in anthropology at Durham University and an active member of Transition Durham, my permaculture teacher Wilf Richards and I co-supervised a masters research project as a partnership between the university and Durham Local Food Network. In the time-honoured anthropological research tradition of participant-observation, the researcher, Amy Mycock, embedded herself in Transition Durham and the Durham Local Food Network as an active collaborator, which from a scientific point of view allowed her close access to producers and other business in the network. Reflecting on the project retrospectively, we realised that we had spontaneously approached it as an exercise in social permaculture, which was our habitual way of doing things in Transition Durham, and delivered it in ways that demonstrated all twelve of the design principles identified by permaculture co-founder David Holmgren. This design systematises the insights that arose from this experience in a way that allows their in application to future collaborative research projects through a customised version of the OBREDIM design process.

Design 2 in my diploma portfolio.

 

Designer:

Tom Henfrey

Practical Solutions Categories
Citizen science
Further and higher education
Local food networks
Stage of design
implemented
Design PDFs
tom_henfrey_permaculture_diploma_design_2_-_collaborative_research.pdf
design_2_appendix_1.pdf
design_no_2_assessment.pdf
Date of design