Co-designing Citizen Social Science for Collective Action

CoAct is a project funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme coordinated by Universitat de Barcelona. CoAct proposes a new understanding of Citizen Social Science as participatory research co-designed and directly driven by citizen groups sharing a social concern, in which they become co-researchers in processes commonly dominated by academic researchers. CoAct aims to bring together and develop methods to give citizen groups an equal ‘seat at the table’ through active participation in research, from the design to the interpretation of the results and their transformation into concrete actions. 

Citizen Social Science combines equal collaboration between citizen groups (co-researchers) that share a social concern and academic researchers. Such an approach enables addressing pressing social issues from the bottom up, embedded in their social contexts, with robust research methods.

The project ends next December 2022 and has produced relevant materials for the progress of Citizen Science NOW. They mention one of them here, but they encourage us to dive into the website project to discover other materials.
The project organised the “Citizen Social Science School – Enhancing social dimensions of citizen science” with participants from different parts of the planet online. The school offered academic researchers a common space and a shared time to reflect, discuss, learn, and receive practical guidelines to explore social dimensions behind a comprehensive set of Citizen Science practices related to social issues in September 2021 and when involving groups and persons in a vulnerable situation acting as co-researchers. Sessions were all recorded and combined academic contributions with contributions from civil society organisations from the Global South. Each session in a video format is complemented with an extensive pdf file that includes a general discussion and a long list of references and resources to explore what we all may understand as Citizen Social Science.

The same project has collected a long list of readings. It is now delivering policy briefs addressing three pressing issues: Mental Health, Youth Employment, Environmental Justice, and Gender Equality. All these resources interest those wanting to enhance the social dimension in citizen science.

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