Introducing the citizen science & universities working group blog
Yaela Golumbic
Oct. 9, 2024, 8:38 a.m.
Welcome to the blog series of the ECSA ‘Citizen Science & Universities’ working group. This page was launched in the Summer of 2024, to share our experiences, peer learnings, and joint conclusions with a wider audience.
ECSA working groups carry out strategic work around a particular theme related to citizen science. The Citizen Science & Universities’ working group advocates and supports the embedding of citizen science activities at the university level, for both research and education purposes. Our members are citizen science administrators, practitioners and researchers based at universities across Europe and beyond, and passionate about expanding citizen science.
This blog series is dedicated to capturing the essence of our working group meetings, each focusing on a unique theme related to our joint activities under the umbrella of ‘citizen science at universities’. In every post, we’ll spotlight one of these meetings, with different members of our working group taking turns as chairs. They will present their work, lead discussions, and share insights from our collaborative efforts.
The topics being covered in this series resulted from a working group workshop at the ECSA conference in Vienna in 2024, where we identified common interests, challenges, and variety of activities working group members engage with. These topics can be broadly categorised as follows: supporting citizen science, researching citizen science, teaching using citizen science or about citizen science, doing citizen science and running projects, developing policies for engaging stakeholders, and the role of citizen science in university libraries, among others. You can read the formal report on this workshop here.
Through this blog, we aim to share our collective experiences, learnings, and the innovative ways we’re advancing citizen science within academic institutions. We hope you’ll enjoy exploring this blog and invite you to share your comments, questions or experiences with us! Read the first contribution here, Floor Keersmaekers and Yaela Golumbic, Supporting citizen science: building stronger citizen science hubs.
Interested in joining the working group? Please contact the chairs by e-mail, outlining your experience and which activities you are interested in (see e-mail links on the WG webpage).