In this webinar supported by the European Citizen Science Association and Living Knowledge Equity, Inclusion and Empowerment working group, Rachel Pateman shared work from a recent Citizen Science: Theory and Practice article, “Citizen Science: Pathways to Impact and why Participant Diversity Matters”.
Rachel Pateman and co-author Sarah West created a comprehensive list of 70 proposed benefits, outcomes, and impacts of citizen science. They used this list to construct 9 pathways to impact and explored how a lack of diversity in citizen science participants can cascade through these pathways, affecting the overall ability of citizen science to achieve its myriad potential impacts and further entrenching disparities in society. This talk shared their insights from this work and include an active discussion amongst talk attendees on the authors’ call for “greater imagination in exploring, testing, and sharing ways in which barriers to participation can be understood and overcome to open citizen science up to all and to achieve its potential”.
Rachel and Sarah work together in the Citizen Science research group at SEI York.
SEI York’s Citizen Science Research Group has been designing, running, evaluating, and consulting on citizen science projects on a wide range of topics since 2008, as well as publishing impactful research on Citizen Science theory.
Speaker
Journal article / This article advocated for greater understanding of barriers to participation in citizen science projects and suggested methods for improving impact.
Journal article / This paper addresses challenges faced by LMICs using citizen science to enhance official data monitoring of SDGs.
Feature / Co-created citizen science empowers communities, reshaping research to reflect their real needs and priorities.
