First short report of cluster events

The ‘First short report of cluster events’ is Deliverable 2.2 (D2.2) from the EU-funded project European Citizen Science. This deliverable is part of WP2 entitled ‘Strengthening links and collaboration’, which has the overall objective to strengthen and expand the citizen science community. 

More specifically, this deliverable is part of Task 2.5 ‘Strengthening collaboration through harnessing resources and outputs from EU, national and regional CS initiatives’ and focuses on one of the activities of T2.5, which is to organise yearly online cluster events involving projects, networks and European Commission representatives to engage in discussions centred around a unifying theme in the field of CS.

The purpose of this document is to highlight the key insights gathered from the first annual cluster event, which took place online on July 3rd, 2023. The event, titled “Foster the Higher Education Sector in Europe: The role of citizen science in transforming universities”, attracted approximately 108 attendees across Europe. Key points for maximising the potential of CS in higher education included raising researchers' awareness of CS, encouraging peer learning, promoting multi-level collaborations, and integrating CS early in education. There was a strong call for supporting early-career researchers, re-evaluating how their contributions to CS are recognised, and developing strategies to drive citizen engagement in CS activities supported by structures within universities. The significance of engaging a broader range of stakeholders, especially those from the university's local ecosystems, was also emphasised.

The document is presented in the following order: Section 1 introduces the rationale and the objectives of the cluster event. Section 2 elaborates on eight key takeaways of the cluster event drawn from the experiences of the participating projects and initiatives, and three group activities. Finally, section 3 gathers some concluding remarks and next steps. The annexes include a detailed agenda of the event, details of the projects presented along with the biographies of the speakers, details about the profile of the attendees and a selection of visual output resulting from the activities carried out throughout the event.