Together with the UNICA network, EUTOPIA TRAIN organized two webinars and a workshop on citizen science. Continue reading to learn all about it!
How to engage citizens in your research?
On February 15th, we did a deep dive into the question of How to engage citizens in your research? Helping us to address this question were panel members Michael Scott (co-director of the Warwick Institue of Engagement) and his colleague, professor Sophie Staniszewska, together with professor Lucija Momirski (University of Ljubljana) and Carina Veeckman (imec-SMIT, VUB). They talked about how to build and keep sustainable relationships and fruitful collaborations with citizens, both at the start of and during a citizen science research project.
No less than 105 colleagues from all over the world attended the webinar! The recording can be found here, and both the program (including the speakers' biographies) and the presentations are on the event page. Take a look!
The webinar was followed by an interactive online workshop for 25 participants, hosted by Carina Veeckman and Sven De Boeck (VUB Science Outreach Office). This workshop focused on communication with citizens, introducing the participants to tools that can be used to start up a citizen science project and motivate citizen scientists to get involved. The presentation that was used is also on the event page.
Succesful strategies in applying for citizen science funding
Our second webinar took place on May 17th! The topic was based on our survey about researchers' needs for support in citizen science. A lot of colleagues indicated their interest in finding the right funding channels and writing strong and convincing project applications. So we invited Annelies Duerinckx (Coordinator of Scivil), professor Jon Coaffee (University of Warwick), Marzia Mazzonetto (CEO at Stickydot), Florian Heigl (Coordinator of Citizen Science Network Austria) and Katharina Buse (Project Advisor at the European Research Executive Agency (REA) to enlighten us on the subject. We were joined by 51 European researchers. You can watch the recording on YouTube or look into the presentations and the program on the event page.
An additional resource is now available on the website of Scivil: an article summarizing the main take aways from the webinar in 7 tips or guidelines. You'll find it here (also available in Dutch)!
Do you want to stay informed about our activities on citizen science?
- Join our community of practice by sending an e-mail to floor.keersmaekers@vub.be
- Participate in our next Citizen Science Clinic on June 7th!