Action research and researcher activism

Patricia Gayá, Miren Larrea and Eleonora Spinelli

Chapter 26 in Handbook of Critical Work and Organizational Psychology, 2026, pp 462-477 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: This chapter synthesizes key insights from action research, a family of participatory, action-orientated approaches to inquiry and researcher activism. The chapter foregrounds the links between action research and researcher activism and the critical scholarship and social movements of the Global South, especially the political-pedagogical projects and liberation psychologies originating in Latin America. This analysis articulates the epistemological and social-psychological grounding for action research as a liberatory praxis concerned with dismantling the dehumanizing impacts of colonization and oppression, and with furthering emancipation. Its relevance to W-O psychology lies in its critical yet future- and change-orientated attention to socio-psychological processes of oppression and emancipation within hierarchical social contexts with marked power differentials. Drawing on the authors’ empirical practice of action research and researcher activism in organizational and territorial contexts, this chapter offers orientating coordinates for those interested in taking some of this forward in their own research.

Keywords: Action Research; Research Activism; Participatory Action Research; Freire; Liberation Psychology; Territorial Development (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
ISBN: 9781035331055
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