Director:
Assoc Prof Barbara Pamphilon;

Program Leaders:
Dr Rob Fitzgerald
Assoc Prof Christie Chang
Prof John Spriggs
Prof Barbara Chambers

In the AISC we believe that sustainable change is only possible when we harness and connect the knowledges of all stakeholders. We value the knowledge of experts —the village member, the farmer, the local councillor, the scientific specialist—all have important perspectives.

You would recognise our processes as participatory, empowering and collaborative, which we are now calling organic research and collaborative development (ORCD©) . This naming signposts our commitment to growing projects from the ‘ground-up’ and that are ‘watered and fed’ from outside as needed.

In our project review and evaluation work ORCD is also a hallmark. We have developed collaborative inquiry processes that engage multiple stakeholders in facilitated dialogues in order to clarify lessons learned and to determine possible ways forward. This form of evaluation is an important complement to the traditional performance indicator review (which we also do!)

Often we go into new projects as the external source of generative ideas, but in doing so our primary commitment is to enable local stakeholders to increasingly take the reins. Therefore all of our projects build in knowledge transfer, capacity building and mentoring.