Greetings!
This is my personal website.
Here I will primarily describe my current and continuing life work foci.
Me
My work
Eventually I will put here links to all my written publications that are freely available online.
This is the correct link for my most-accessed paper available online :
What is Participatory Action Research? Action Research International Journal, Paper 2: 1998
And here is a bibliography list of some of my best-known published work
Here also is the website for my magnum opus book: Building in Research and Evaluation: Human Inquiry for Living Systems – the 3rd book in my methodology trilogy which describes a conceptul framework for 'full cycle' inductive-abductive-deductive-retroductive evaluative research or science per se.
In 2026 this book has just gone into a 2nd edition with a new title, reversing the 1st edition's title to clarify the significance of the transdisciplinary 'full cycle science' meta-epistemology, and its systemic correspondences with the cycles of life, psychology and sociology, now titled – Human Inquiry for Living Systems: Building in Research and Evaluation for Life.
The other two books in my methodology trilogy have also gone into new 4th editions in 2026 :
The 1st book, Do It Yourself Social Research, demystifies how to carry out 'full cycle’ social science.
The 2nd book, Everyday Evaluation On The Run, demystifies how to carry out ‘full cycle evaluation’.
Both are Australian popular best-selling books for more than thirty years.
These are the two journal articles that summarise the 3rd book's radically new, transdisciplinary, practice-based theory and the 'new systems thinking' underpinning it :
– Systemic human relations in dynamic equilibrium, Systemic Practice and Action Research (2008),
Vol.21 No.1 pp.15-34
– ‘Is it safe to talk about systems again yet?' – Self organ-ising processes for complex living systems
and the dynamics of human inquiry, Systemic Practice and Action Research (2008),
Vol.21 No.2 pp.153-170
This 3rd book both demystifies systems thinking and also, in what has been called an 'innovative' and 'highly original' theory, integrates conceptually the following multiple disciplines, to match observed practice-based 'life inquiring for itself' :
– the cyclic dynamic process and formative properties of a living systems eco-biology | Chapter 2
– with a cyclic meta-epistemology of how we inquire to make change and stabilise new forms/ways | Ch 3
– embodying a psychology of people's inquiry capabilities & individual preferences | Ch 4 and Appendix 3
– incorporating a sociology of socially-inquiring groups, communities, organisations, cultures,
institutions, nation states and globally | Chapters 4 and 5
You will also find an international journal Book review as well as readers' feedback (unsolicited)
a full Table of Contents that shows the logic of what I am saying,
Links to others doing parallel and comparable work,
and an Annotated bibliography of systems/inquiry concepts.
Here are the links to all three books on the Routledge world-wide publisher's websites :
Do It Yourself Social Research (4th ed. 2026)
Everyday Evaluation on the Run (4th ed. 2026)
Human Inquiry for Living Systems: Building in Research and Evaluation for Life (2nd ed. 2026)
And here is the link to the Routledge 40th anniversary box set trilogy
at a great 'three-for-the-price-of' discount! -
Yoland Wadsworth's Social Research and Evaluation Systems 3-Volume Set (2026)
My other life
Action to reduce crisis levels of excess atmospheric carbon and resulting global warming, restore nature, and wind back the growing climate emergency | anything to do with Norway – Finland – Asiatic Samisk – Siberia – Mongolia – Himalaya – 2004 beloved Bangladesh | West Yorkshire – NE Scotland | Community – Neighbourhood | Other ways of finding life in the everyday
My networks
Here you will find the website of the Action Research Issues Association and its Action Research Centre – a not-for-profit community association that has been a longstanding local home for action research and participatory action researchers, consultancy, co-learning workshops and published resources in Australia (see its work program here), and for nearly forty years also a community of practice for up to thirty participatory 'epistemological fellow travelling companion' members of the Association in Melbourne and Victoria. It initiated or contributed to convening many local, statewide, national and international networks to assist our and their co-inquiry processes.
Here is a list including some links to organisations and people with whom I work or am otherwise involved or connected by like-minded, like-hearted approaches.
And to Maria Fernanda Villagrán Barillas who has created an animated compilation of my work in Guatemala, hello from me. What a lovely thing to have done, thank you.
And to Dr Zuleyka Zevallos, an experienced applied sociologist who curates Sociology at Work, thank you for wanting to highlight Australian women sociologists and for this filmed interview about my work.
Availability & Contact
For small-scale facilitated roundtable conversations about the transdisciplinary living systems meta-epistemology and practice-based theory (2008a, 2008b, 2010, 2026) , in Melbourne or Norway – contact me at <living[dot]systems[dot]research[at]gmail[dot]com>
One of these roundtables with Q&As will take place at the Action Learning Action Research national conference to be held at the University of Melbourne's Woodward Centre (Melbourne Law School) on 30 September 2026
The peace doves image
The blue sky peace doves image is from a hand-potted vase bequeathed to me through the Estate of the late Cate Kyne (along with a tall wooden rabbit and a teapot shaped like a house that now features on the 2026 cover of Human Inquiry for Living Systems: Building in Research and Evaluation for Life, alluding to that book's use of the house as a central metaphor). With many thanks to Gina Reid and members of the USA-based Facebook group Vintage Pottery and Chinaware Identification, the 14-year mystery of the identity of the potter-artist of the vase has at last been solved. I can report that Catherine Georganda is the Greek 20th century modernist potter who made this inspirational doves pot, possibly in Argostoli on the island of Kefalonia.
Caty Kyne was a close friend and fellow social change/PAR/community development, adult education and climate emergency thinker-activist-feminist who was also a long-time member of the Action Research Issues Association.
We have created a website on which we have published her work and links to that of others: CateKyne.net.au
The image on the vase represents a lot about both my own life's work and Caty's to assist and resource people achieve mutual understanding and 'dynamic peace' through constant co-inquiry in dialogue for lives of greater mutual well-being. The image is also about the hope of glimpsing the promise of new 'green growth' which grows out of turbulent 'muddy waters, let stand, become clear'*.
---
* derived from Lao Tzu Tao Te Ching | Book of the Way Ch. 15