Citizen Science

Contact

Chair: Rachel Farrow
Twitter: @BESCitSci

Background

Citizen science can be broadly defined as the involvement of volunteers in research. The past decade has seen a rapid increase in the number of citizen-science initiatives, spanning diverse areas of interest and ranging from local to global. Citizen science is the way to combine primary ecological research with environmental education and public engagement.  The technology available to support and inspire new citizen science initiatives and opportunities is rapidly expanding and has enabled citizen science to become global in scale, long-term in ambition and engage hundreds of thousands of volunteers in many different scientific pursuits.  We hope to promote the value of citizen science by sharing experience, expertise and providing a community to foster innovation in research through citizen science.

Mailing List

If you would like to sign up to our mailing list to receive updates from the community, click here.

Aims

• Provide a forum for sharing details of current citizen science in ecology, and as a community to foster and support creativity in research via citizen science
• Develop links with relevant initiatives across disciplines and facilitate local to global collaborations on citizen science
• Encourage networking and sharing of expertise among people like students, volunteers, researchers and policy-makers, who want to support citizen science projects and develop their own

Meetings and Events

Check out the events page for all upcoming events.

Committee members

The Citizen Science SIG committee help organise meetings and events. It includes the following members:

• Chair: Rachel Farrow (University of Lincoln)
• Communications (Website and Niche): Kate Lewthwaite (Woodland Trust)
• Communications (TBC) Naveed Bhatti
• Social Media: Sian Green (Durham University), Martina Harianja (University of Cambridge), Catherine Wilson (Loughborough University) Katrin Bohn (Natural England)
• Student Representatives: Emily Baker (Durham University), Sian Green (Durham University), Martina Harianja (University of Cambridge), Catherine Wilson (Loughborough University).
• Advisory member: Gitte Kragh (Citizen Science Netværket), Michael Pocock (Centre for Ecology & Hydrology).