CS Co-labs Discussion Series
Session 2 (8 October 2026)
The second discussion session will take place on Thursday 8 October 2026, 2-3pm BST (UTC+01:00).
Topic to be confirmed.
Session 1. What is citizen science and how does it relate to other participatory methods? (9 September 2026)
In this first session, Sarah West presented a short introduction to Citizen Science and attendees shared their experiences of citizen science.
Presentation
In Sarah's presentation, she highlighted:
- the dual origins and contested definitions of the term citizen science;
- the range of ways citizen science may be used in projects, with the contribution of members of the public ranging from data collection only to participating in multiple or all stages of the research process;
- the European Citizen Science Association (ECSA)’s Ten principles of citizen science, which provide a useful framework for carrying out responsible citizen science; and
- the Inclusive Citizen Science group’s definition of what citizen science is for us - acknowledging that others will define it differently.
Discussions
In the breakout discussions, we heard about a range of applications for citizen science, including topics such as: identifying cotton crop disease in Pakistan; biodiversity monitoring in UK/global; air quality monitoring in India and Vietnam; water quality in the Philippines and York; microplastics in Nigeria; medical health in the UK; and understanding school food environments.
We discussed questions of resourcing (e.g. to what extent co-created citizen science can be done on a project with a short time scale), data (how to get decision makers to accept the integrity of your citizen science data) and overlap with other disciplines, such as behavioural science and PPIE (Patient and Public Involvement and Engagement).
Additional resources
Below are links shared in or before the discussion session
Research shared by participants:
Examples showcasing how citizen science can support data for SDG 14 indicators:
Fraisl et al 2023: The contributions of citizen science to SDG monitoring and reporting on marine plastics.
Research shared by the CS Co-Labs team:
- Example of a collaborative CS project: AQuA project on developing water quality sensors in Yorkshire rivers
- Example of a contributory CS project: Digitising Kew's Collections
- Papers from a co-created CS project: 2020 Parenting Science Gang paper, presenting the results of this project co-created with parents of young children and 2026 paper on the Evaluation of the Parenting Science Gang project
- Digital citizen science projects also can be quite encouraging for neurodiverse people to participate - see this project: Neuro(Minorities)Science
- Examples of CS projects leading to behaviour change
- We've definitely seen teachers and students opening classroom windows more regularly, to maintain good indoor air quality, through taking part in SAMHE
- Smriti Safaya was asking this key question for her PhD about pro-environmental actions. See Smriti’s recent paper about this: Environmental Citizen Science in Schools: Impacts on Knowledge, Attitudes and Behaviour
- Discover more research by the CS Co-labs team on the Inclusive Citizen Science research group pages
Pre-reading
Useful resources on citizen science methods:
You can find a range of resources on the CSUK website, including these accessible reads:
- Citizen science: what's it all about? (a short perspective by SEI)
- Ten principles of citizen science (a summary & link to full SEI research paper)
- The ECSA Characteristics of Citizen Science (a summary & link to full SEI research paper)
- History of citizen science (a short perspective by UCL)