The Citizen Science Lab at Leiden University was founded in 2018 by researchers in the Leiden Observatory and Science Communication & Society in order to consolidate and build on the knowledge gained in practice from the planning and execution of the iSPEX, Dark Sky Meter, de Grote Griepmeting, and Schone Rivieren citizen science (CS) projects.

The mission of the CS Lab is to connect scientists and other citizens to co-create research projects that address urgent scientific and/or societal issues that can only be solved by actively involving volunteers in the scientific process.

In order to achieve this, the CS Lab acts as an Incubator to co-create new sustainable CS projects that connect society with science, and as a Knowledge Hub to build a collaborative CS knowledge-sharing network across the Netherlands.