Citizen science has been described as a participatory research approach where, based on their skills, citizens are directly involved and engaged with the research process. Besides direct outputs, such as cost-effective data collection, many have theorized and proved its potential to raise public awareness, create and share knowledge, transform citizens’ behavioral outcomes, and democratize scientific processes with profound, sustainable impacts. However, like any other approach, citizen science comes with challenges like data quality, resource-intensiveness, ethical concerns, and unforeseen transaction costs.
At its core, citizen science is a collective effort to facilitate communication and understanding at the Science-Policy-Society interface. At DRESDEN-concept, many of us work closely at this interface, as well as with data, but sometimes in silos. With this in mind, and knowing that there are citizen science activities at many of the DRESDEN-concept partner institutes, we are preparing a workshop with four objectives:
Raise awareness about citizen science at DRESDEN-concept.
Present and discuss institutional viewpoints of citizen science at DRESDEN-concept.
Showcase past, existing, and emerging citizen science activities of DRESDEN-concept partners.
Discuss and agree on the future of citizen science at DRESDEN-concept, e.g., in the form of a Working Group, Task Force, or Community of Practice.
Join us in initiating this dialogue to find synergies, trade-offs, and areas of mutual interest for the future in one or more ways.
To participate, email loghmani@unu.edu
