ABSTRACT
This chapter illustrates how activist research in the area of emergency management can help fulfil social work’s obligation to facilitate transitions towards just and sustainable communities. It considers how the author's research might have benefited the community had the intent and design been more explicitly informed by activist research using a participatory action or collaborative inquiry approach as endorsed by N. Godden. The chapter describes a 2016 research project, funded by a small research grant from the author's employer, ECU. The research explored the issue of leadership in disaster recovery by interviewing interested people from Yarloop in the immediate aftermath of a devastating bush fire. An overtly activist, participative inquiry approach to the research study would have been preferable to the one the author used as it would have enabled a greater sense of empowerment and ownership by the study participants.
