Editor’s choice
Editor’s choice
The ECSA is a membership organization that brings together hundreds of individuals and organizations to increase the democratization of knowledge production. It supports the growth of citizen science in Europe and is advocating to establish citizen science as a recognized, promoted and funded approach.
This conference focused on the motto “change”, reflecting the context of fast-moving global developments and shifts. Change can be seen as positive by one group and negative by another. As a result, different perspectives on any given change can draw completely different conclusions.
Researchers from our York centre gave three public presentations, detailed below. Rhys Archer also presented the SAMHE project to the ECSA Air Quality working group. You can download the slides of each of the four presentations in pdf format further down the page.
The study reviewed existing citizen science projects related to energy transitions, examining their goals, methodologies, outcomes, and challenges. It identified successful case studies to showcase the diverse ways citizen science has been applied to address energy challenges. Additionally, the research aimed to bridge the gap between citizen science and energy transition research by investigating the reasons behind their limited coupling, including disciplinary divides, institutional structures, funding mechanisms, and policy frameworks.
Luke’s presentation was the result of a collaborative project with Sarah West and Rachel Pateman. Rachel spoke recently at an ECSA webinar: watch the recording.
Environmental citizen science activities can lead to positive changes in how school students think and act towards the natural environment. While the changes were more pronounced when students co-created citizen science projects, even one-time contributory citizen science activities increased student knowledge, and the frequency and range of environmental behaviors. As a result of rewarding citizen science experiences, teachers at an international school transformed their secondary science program to pioneer a long-term coastal ecology citizen science project, and students and teachers at a local school kick-started an inter-school movement to shift wasteful consumer behavior in wider society. Additionally, biodiversity and pollution citizen science activities changed which psychological factors most influenced student pro-environmental behaviors. This presentation provided practical implications for citizen science project designers and organizers, environmental scientists and educators who want to create impactful citizen science opportunities in formal and informal educational spaces.
At SEI, we are actively involved in a range of co-created citizen science projects that have been executed in recent years. During the first part of this 1.5-hour session, we shared insights and findings from some of our co-created work. This presentation laid the foundation for World Café style discussions centred around thought-provoking prompts to gather insights on co-creation practices across Europe, such as best practices when collaborating with underrepresented groups, identifying and surmounting barriers in the co-creation process within your specific country, and how to ensure a lasting legacy from co-created projects. Discussions from the latter part of the session will be used to inform a collaborative guide on co-created citizen science to ensure it is relevant cross topic and geography.
This open format session was relevant to both those already engaged in the practice of co-creation, and those who utilize other engagement methods in their research.
Following the interest in this session, Rhys is setting up a European network for those engaged in/ or interested in co-created citizen science. If you would like to be included in this network please email Rhys.
Please do not share these presentations through other channels, or use the content, without the permission of the authors.
Project / A citizen science project monitoring indoor air, created with and for UK schools.
Project / The Ecological Citizen(s) project cultivates trans-disciplinary collaboration and research to enable a digital sustainable society for positive climate action.
Project / Investigating if and how hands-on experiences with nature impact values, attitudes and pro-environmental behaviour amongst secondary school students.
Past event / Watch this ECSA webinar, in which Rachel Pateman shared work from a recent article, "Citizen science: pathways to impact and why participant diversity matters".
Past event / For the first time, York joined this international event encouraging people to record wildlife in their own cities.
Journal article / Find out how to design recruitment and retention strategies for citizen science projects, particularly to include underrepresented groups.
