Pippa Buchanan is an Australian educator, researcher, facilitator and urban permaculturist based in Linz, Austria. Her focus is on supporting and facilitating social learning processes which assist individuals and communities to develop ecologically sound futures and adapt to climate change impacts. She draws on permaculture design, systems thinking, informal education theories, future scenario development and facilitation approaches such as Open Space Technology and Art of Hosting in her work.

Pippa is currently working on the research phase of her MSc in Sustainability and Adaptation Planning with the Centre for Alternative Technology (CAT). Her research explores how disaster risk reduction and household resilience is taught in permaculture design certificate (PDC) courses and practiced by permaculture practitioners. By moving between the formal, academic world and bottom-up movements of permaculture and informal education, Pippa’s work and outlook is strengthened by a diverse range of influences.

Pippa’s background is in informal and academic adult education, language teaching, web and games development and online community management with the Mozilla Foundation. She has collaborated on several artistic projects around water management, resilience and the commons, and participated in projects led by organisations such as FoAM, Brussels and Time’s Up, Linz. Given the opportunity she can often be found knitting and thinking, or in the kitchen experimenting with fermenting and other food preservation and transformation techniques.

Researching Permaculture and Disaster Risk Reduction