The research project has three main objectives:
1) To illustrate and conceptualize how grassroots citizen practices expand the reach of environmental research and public engagement with technology across distinct world regions.
2) To determine and compare how citizen-generated data and practices challenge formal institutional approaches to global environmental problems; and how institutions respond to such challenges.
3) Based on (1) and (2), to reflect with project participants and stakeholders on recurrent challenges inherent in democratizing environmental data through grassroots citizen science, and develop synergies between grassroots and formal institutional governance approaches.
To achieve O1, the Fellow has charted the co-evolution of informal, grassroots (bottom-up) and formal (top-down) citizen science trajectories based on a comprehensive review of scholarly and policy documentation, and source texts emanating from grassroots citizen science groups. This review was complemented with semi-structured interviews with members of citizen science groups and social movements, civil servants, policymakers, enabling the Fellow to distinguish trends that shape the current context for citizen science in East-Asia and Belgium, Europe. The Fellow adopted a multi-sited ethnographic approach consisting of intensive field visits and participant-observation techniques. Due to the COVID outbreak, the Fellow performed an exploratory analysis of grassroots citizen science initiatives in Africa.
To achieve O2, the Fellow documented how citizen science is shaped through encounters between citizen scientists and members of formal institutions, their discourses and materials, utilizing and expanding concepts being developed in citizen science scholarship. These findings are reported on in international peer-reviewed journals, books, conference proceedings, and other publications, including the mainstream media; and presented at citizen science venues (e.g. European Citizen Science Association conferences).
The COVID outbreak has prevented the fulfilment of the O3. However, the Fellow has published extensively on his research project in policy and media outlets to feed public debates on grassroots citizen science, guide research and policymaking and ensure the social relevance of the project and its results. For more details, see: project final technical report.
