Official URL: https://doi.org/10.4337/9781803922027.00037

This chapter outlines why participatory action research (PAR) can be useful to social movements, and how to make it so. PAR involves movement activists carrying out research geared to their own needs, in a democratic process that transforms movement relationships and practice. The chapter is grounded in a 25-year experience of supporting activists carrying out PAR, and shows the wide range of different shapes it can take as activists reflect together on their own practice. It argues that this is far less risky than trial and error; focusses on the thing activists have most control over (their own actions); that its participatory and collective educational dimensions benefit movements politically; and that PAR supports movements becoming learning actors. Despite the diversity of actually-existing PAR, the chapter highlights some core principles that can be distilled from the experiences discussed to make PAR genuinely useful to movements.