Mushroom Hack co-designing solutions with the public to help grow mushrooms on waste coffee. 

public involvement and citizen science 

When you dig a bit deeper into science communication, you begin to see that the reasons we do this have to do with our sense of responsibiilty to public involvement with science/research and motiviation is a huge part of why researchers get involved with such work. We are all citizens, with families, friends, and communities who need to discover knowledge from people who can be trusted. University researchers are especially important here and scientists are highly regarded and trusted. These beliefs in public involvement are also informing how we do science and the rise of citizen science is seen as one important way to do this

Projects that work within this theme examine and test the idea that science communication is most effective when the public are involved in the co-creation of knowledge. They will be designed around principles of co-development and involvement and you’ll likely want to work with communities and adopt methods of social scientific research.

  • Arnason, V. (2012) Scientific citizenship in a democratic society, Public Understanding of Science, 22: 927

  • Geoghegan, H., Dyke, A., Pateman, R., West, S. & Everett, G. (2016). Understanding motivations for citizen science. Final report on behalf of UKEOF, University of Reading, Stockholm Environment Institute (University of York) and University of the West of England

  • Irwin, A. (1995). Citizen Science: A Study of People, Expertise and Sustainable Development. Psychology Press

  • Reed, M.S (2016). The Research Impact handbook. Fast Track Impact

  • Swinton, J., & Ochu, E., The MSI Turing’s Sunflowers Consortium (2016). Novel fibonacci and non-fibonacci structure in the sunflower: Results of a citizen science experiment. Royal Society Open Science 3(5).

  • Woolley, P.J., McGowan M.L., Teare H. J. A, Coathup V., Fishman J.R., SetterstenJr R.A., Sterckx S., Kaye J. and Juengst E.T. (2016). Citizen science or scientific citizenship? Disentangling the uses of public engagement rhetoric in national research initiatives. BMC Medical Ethics 17:33

  • ESCA Working Group (2015) Ten principles of citizen science. The European Citizen Science Association. A range of digital planning and prototyping tools will be provided to resource student participation in this module, including: https://crowdsourcing-toolkit.sites.usa.gov