Organisation: Michal Frankl
The roundtable brings together experts who will share their experience with citizen science research from diverse disciplines. Together, we will critically reflect on the promises and challenges of engaging non-experts in research projects. We will explore citizen science beyond data acquisition including the concepts of shared authority and co-authorship. We take the word “citizen” in the label seriously and investigate how these forms of engagement enhance social and cultural competences of participants and whether these approaches can be mobilised for a better integration of marginalised groups. Without idealising them, we discuss both past and recent projects and probe the promise of citizen science to democratise science and grow trust in expert knowledge. Finally, we examine how these participatory research designs have been deployed and how they can be improved in the history of science.