Permaculture's inherently experimental, learning-based approach has a natural affinity with applied, participatory and engaged modes of research. Drawing on experiences of collaboratively designed and delivered research projects in permaculture, Transition and related fields, this paper will describe how systematic use of permaculture as a methodology for research design can reveal and help deliver on multiple yields.

This paper examines some of the issues that arise when we want to use research to develop, and to demonstrate, the effectiveness of permaculture practices in their actual application.  Many of the benefits that are experienced are hard to measure using standard horticultural research techniques. For example, the standard procedure of isolating variables is particularly problematic when the important practices are those of integration and working with whole systems.

This presentation will explore the contributions that anthropology can make to the scholarship of permaculture through discussion of anthropological fieldwork that is currently being undertaken by Dr. Keri Chiveralls at the Earthship Ironbank workshops in the Adelaide Hills in South Australia.