Fireside Chat | Supporting Citizen Science Communities | Tzovaras, Hsing, Scott, Kushner, Aitkenhead
Channel: The Turing Way
Date: 2022-10-31

On 28 October 2022, 15:00-16:00 UTC, The Turing Way + AutSPACEs Fireside Chat took place on the topic: "Supporting Citizen Participatory Science Communities".

At its origins, the citizen and participatory science movement emerged as a way of including civil society in the process of scientific research, with the notion of making it more accessible for amateur and non-professional scientists, individuals, and communities. With it came the growth of projects in the natural sciences, alongside crowdsourcing platforms and other means of enabling public data collection. As the movement has grown to include social and behavioural sciences, citizen science has also asked foundational questions about the scientific process itself, asking questions about who science has historically included and excluded, who does and does not have power, and how scientific research can adapt participatory approaches to learning, decision-making, and communication. From these questions have emerged projects that aim to employ peer-production and user-centred design, aiming to include populations that are usually talked about or to, but not worked with and empowered to steward the scientific process. This fireside chat brings together different projects within citizen science and participatory research to ask questions like: how has citizen science and participatory approaches changed the landscape of scientific research, and challenged its foundations? How do these projects enable participatory practices and communities? What challenges have these projects faced in an evolving digital landscape? 

Chaired by Georgia Aitkenhead (AutSPACEs) and Anne Lee Steele (The Turing Way), this panel will feature insights from Bastian Greshake Tzovaras (OpenHumans), Pen-Yuan Tsing (MammalWeb), James Scott (Center for Digital Ethics and Innovation - CDEI), and Marc Kuchner (National Aeronautics and Space Administration - NASA). These individuals represent different expertise, industries, and understandings of citizen science and participatory research in diverse contexts (read their bios below). 

View more about the speakers on the Eventbrite page: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/supporting-citizen-participatory-science-communities-tickets-445204818597