In this presentation Smriti shares insightful findings and implications from 5 years of research working with Hong Kong and the United Kingdom secondary schools and reveals how environmental citizen science projects can have a more lasting impact on students and teachers.
Use the link below to download the presentation as a pdf.
Smriti’s presentation at CAPS 25 (intro slide)
Smriti Safaya
There is a large body of research into the experiences of participants in citizen science events, but what about those who organize them? It is largely assumed that the main drive is to gather data. However, organizers may have motivations beyond this.
We examined the experiences of those who organized participation of UK cities in the City Nature Challenge in 2024. We used mixed-methods research, beginning with surveys and following up with semi-structured interviews and written responses from seven organizers across five city regions. We looked at both their personal and professional motivations, the strategies they used to engage participants and the potential outcomes of those communication and engagement techniques.
Using an interactive poster, Smriti and John Terenzini shared findings from this research and also lessons from organizing the first City Nature Challenge in York, UK in 2024. This event was inclusive and co-created with multiple stakeholders across the non-profit, academic, corporate and political sectors. The combined stories initiated reflection and conversation about best practice public engagement with biodiversity citizen science initiatives like City Nature Challenge, and considered how these can be applied to wider environmental citizen science opportunities.
Use the link below to download the poster.
Smriti and John’s poster at CAPS 25
Poster: Smriti Safaya, SEI York
The presentation and poster were first given at the 2025 Conference for Advancing the Participatory Sciences (CAPS25).
Project / Investigating if and how hands-on experiences with nature impact values, attitudes and pro-environmental behaviour amongst secondary school students.
Project / CHILI aims to ensure that we support and improve children’s health and education as school and nursery buildings are adapted for energy efficiency.
Project / We’ve delivered a co-designed web-based tool to enable schools to see the costs and benefits of installing HEPA filter units.
Journal article / This paper shares learnings from a discussion on co-creation practices across Europe, which we led at the 2024 European Citizen Science Association conference.
