Abstract: Citizen science, as a distinct field of studies and practice, has emerged about 15 years ago. As an umbrella term, it’s not a simple one – what should we include and define as citizen science and what shouldn’t? This is not only a semantic question, since as different funders, governments, and charities act want to develop projects that they will call “citizen science”, such a decision can have a significant impact. Another concern about the term is the use of “citizen” as well as “science” – for example, think of a collaborative local history project done by asylum seekers. In the talk I will cover some of the discussions around the terminology and focus on a specific effort of developing the “ECSA characteristics of citizen science”.
Speaker bio: Professor Muki Haklay is a Professor of Geographic Information Science in the Department of Geography, University College London. He is also the co-director of the UCL Extreme Citizen Science group, which is dedicated to allowing any community, regardless of their literacy, to use scientific methods and tools to collect, analyse, interpret and use information about their area and activities.