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Research on citizen participation in response to climate change has predominately focused on individual behaviour change and barriers to participation (Moser & Ekstrom, 2010; Whitmarsh, Seyfang, & O’Neill, 2011; Wibeck, 2014;. This research focus fails to address that people’s actions arise within complex, multi-level and multi-dimensional interdependent interactions at individual, community and broader social and ecological system levels (Buergelt & Paton, 2014). To develop transformative responses in urban climate change adaptation it is necessary to understand how people, individually and collectively, make sense of, make decisions about, and seek to act in response to, the uncertain and evolving consequences of climate change and uncover how power plays a role as citizens seek to be active participants in creating change for sustainability. The most commonly recognised act of civic participation is volunteering and those who volunteer in environmentally focused, community-led groups present a rich cohort to address these gaps. Through environmental volunteering people work with a shared vision across sectors through a range of actions such as education, activism, restoration, monitoring and sustainable living, to maintain or effect change to their local areas (Huq & Burgin, 2016). By examining those ‘already acting’ research can address questions to identify the psychological and contextual elements of local systems and factors and processes that support citizens to participate in governance and contribute to urban sustainability. These questions necessitate a research design capable of capturing the dynamic processes in people’s experiences as volunteers. A methodological framework of action research, grounded theory and ethnography has been developed that provides methods that are is robust and capable of capturing the complexity in people’s experiences and develop theory that will contribute to transforming cross-sector governance practices in sustainable urban climate change adaptation.

There is limited knowledge about how to facilitate the revival and to embed Indigenous strengths-based DRR within community development. Building on a recent scoping project, Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples will work together two-way to facilitate Galiwin’ku reviving and strengthening their YolÅ‹u law, knowledges and cultural practices, especially governance, to heal from disasters, (re)build Indigenous capacities that reduce the risk of natural and social disasters, and to increase recognition of the value of Indigenous culture. This project is initiated and led by the community-based research organisation Yalu MarÅ‹githinyaraw. It represents phase 2 of an overarching research agenda (see figure).

An applied research project to pilot and evaluate a health humanities response design to assist bushfire affected communities to recover from trauma. Creative Arts & Trauma associated with natural disasters, bushfire specific