CoAct D8.4: Citizen Social Science Open Training Materials for social scientists PhD programmes

DISCLAIMER:  The present Project Deliverable has been submitted to the European Commission for review. The information and views set out in this report are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official opinion of the European Union. Neither the European Union institutions and bodies nor any person acting on their behalf may be held responsible for the use which may be made of the information contained therein.    

The CoAct (Co-designing Citizen Social Science for Collective Action) project proposes to face social global issues by placing citizens in a vulnerable situation at the centre of the research. This approach represents a new understanding of Citizen Social Science (CSS), as participatory research co-designed with citizen groups sharing a social concern. 

Along these lines, there exists an important need to provide spaces for academic researchers not only to increase their knowledge and their skills but also to learn about new methods to develop a citizen science that enhances social dimension. Covid situation has obliged to run the school in an online format. The online format has motivated the choice to organise a rather long school (two weeks duration, 9 school days) and to have a daily concentrated routine scheduled during the afternoon. Considering positive aspects related to the COVID situation, the online format has allowed to have a wider diversity of participants and a larger number of participants (39) that were initially anticipated. Participants were coming from 20 different countries. Despite their own difficulties with internet access, we also had participants from Africa and South America. Broadly, 25% of the applicants are MSc students while 50% are pursuing their PhD (66% of early career researchers). Research areas of participants include public health, sociology, biomedicine, political sciences, architecture, law… In addition, following the experimental spirit of any research project, it has also been the intention of the school to provide the broadest perspective possible with 38 lecturers, including a wide variety of disciplines and perspectives,  and with the participation of other H2020 projects and the Project Officer of CoAct. 

The Deliverable 8.4 is mostly focussed on the delivery of the open materials which are briefly described in Section 2. These have taken a digital format (pdfs and videos) and they are accessible through CoAct website. Section 3 fully reproduces the key document of the school: the School Guide. The guide is a quite extensive pdf document which includes the general information of the school, the detailed contents of each session with a list of resources and the bio of the lecturers. Section 4 includes some final remarks about the whole process of preparing the materials and about the school itself.