The ECSA conference is now over, and for me, it ended with the final excursion of the citizen science day. On a lovely spring evening, we joined the coordinators of the amphibiom project at Bednar Park, observing and hearing the story of a unique green toads community that is managing to hang on in a very urbanised area of Vienna. This was both joyful – to see that different species are managing to find a way to live and maintain their community in an intensive human environment, and poignant, remembering what citizen science is for and the need to use it to protect species and biodiversity ..read more

The final keynote of the ECSA 2024 conference was given by Katja Mayer on “Participatory Turns: The Bumpy Roads to Recognition of Participatory Approaches in Social Sciences and Lessons for Citizen Science.” The starting point is the need to consider the increase “participation” across disciplines and what participation means. She covers the participatory turns. In the world, there are many invisible applications of social science and humanities and how their powers work with their invisibility – they are all around (e.g. Meta). Citizen science seems like a good place to explore the invisibil ..read more

Shannon titled her talk “The Challenges of Continuous Adaptation: Citizen Science for a Changing World. Shannon is leading the Open Environmental Data Project. Her thinking is done with collaboration with a lot of colleagues over the years – and recognising them. What can we contribute to citizen science in a changing world? The Mississippi and Louisiana are known for their rich biodiversity, but also for being the largest concentration of the petrochemical industry, and her forming experiences are located in this landscape. She defines herself in the area between activism and policy and infr ..read more

The European Citizen Science Association is celebrating 10 years, and the bi-annual conference is dedicated to change. The opening session at the BOKU university. Opened by the rector Eva Schulev-Stiendl. She noted that citizen science is a powerful tool for democratising science. Empowering individuals and communities to be involved in science. At BOKU there is an experience and awareness to citizen science. BOKU is committed to promoting citizen science at the institutional level but also supporting it across Austria through Osterreich forschet (the Austrian network http://www.citizen-scienc ..read more

The colloquium on STS and Citizen Science was organised by Katja Mayer and Claudia Gobel at Vienna University. The workshop brings in the tension between being a researcher and understanding society through STS lenses about knowledge production and the way participatory research develops. The second aspect is the activities of people who are involved in the practice of participatory research. Therefore, working on the boundary between citizen science and STS. There seem to be a lot of interactions between citizen science and STS – the use of STS concepts within CS research and practice for exa ..read more

Last year, I’ve contributed to the Toposophy podcast, which is called “Common Ground”. It covers a wide range of topics in urbanism and urban planning, from culture to technology. The episode that I spoke on is dedicated to direct democracy and citizen science, exploring the links between deep engagement forms of citizens in the management of various issues in the places that they live in. The episode can be found here https://www.toposophy.com/podcasts/direct-democracy-and-citizen-science and I also enjoyed listening to the other episodes in the series ..read more

The roundtable took place on 18th September 2023, at the European Commission in Brussels. The people who participated include people from research funders, people with interest at local, national and European level, people who are involved in the engagement of civil society. Policies can be at universities, municipalities, R&I organisations, national bodies and European. Georgios Papanagnou opened the event with a review of public engagement in research and within Horizon Europe. The reasons for engagement: contribute to excellence, effectiveness, and trust of society in science. These asp ..read more

At the end of May, the Citizen Science Association (CSA) celebrated its 10th year anniversary in its conference – C*Sci 2023, held at Arizona State University (ASU) in Tempe, Arizona. The conference (22-26 May) provided the opportunity to meet face-to-face colleagues in the area of citizen science, which I haven’t had a chance to talk and meet with since the conference in March 2019 (in Raleigh, NC). I have participated, to some extent, in the online conferences in 2021 and 2022. Yet, there is no replacement for sitting down and talking with people, hearing the discussion in panels, during bre ..read more

As part of the Swedish presidency of the European Union, an event on the 16th May focused on open science from policy to practice. The event marked the end of the Mutual Learning Exercise (MLE) on citizen science initiatives. There are several useful outputs that were shared at this final event, with a lot of relevance to the wider participatory science, citizen science, and science communication and engagement communities. First, there is a final report which was led by Margaret Gold: The final report of the MLE present a summary of the learning and recommendations generated throughout the ye ..read more

Back in 2020, in the middle of the pandemic, I was happy to contribute to the Post-Normal Science 5 conference (PNS5), with a presentation about the relationships between citizen science and post-normal science. Following the conference, I developed the presentation into a paper. The peer review provided robust and useful advice on how the paper can be improved. The most significant review point was to ask about the validity of the decision about the position of each type of citizen science activity within the different problem-solving zones. Indeed, the original talk was based on my subjectiv ..read more