Layers of Values: Exploring Impact in Culture, Art and Education
On 25 September 2025, in the framework of MONDIACULT 2025, Layers of values: Exploring Impact in Culture, Art and Education will take place as an international meeting dedicated to advancing inclusive impact assessment in the arts, culture, and education sectors. In a time when social inclusion, civic participation, emotional well-being, and ecological transition are urgent priorities, the convergence of arts, culture, and education has proven to be a driver for building more diverse, resilient, and imaginative societies. Yet, despite the richness of this field, many initiatives still operate in isolation, and valuable learning remains fragmented. The event will gather projects, practitioners, and researchers working at the intersection of culture, education, and research to address complex evaluation challenges: capturing intangible outcomes, defining success with vulnerable groups or informal settings, and measuring layered impacts that go beyond simple metrics. Drawing on the New European Bauhaus values — beauty, sustainability, and inclusion — it will offer a space for peer exchange, co-creation, and methodological innovation. Organised by the EU-funded PULSE-ART project, in cooperation with European Citizen Science (ECS), the meeting aims to embed diversity not as an optional goal, but as a foundational condition for equitable impact. It will also strengthen connections between cultural, educational, and citizen science initiatives, paving the way for shared tools and collaborative frameworks. If your work touches on culture, education, or citizen science — and you are committed to developing rigorous, inclusive evaluation practices — this event offers a unique opportunity to exchange knowledge and shape the future of impact assessment
ECS Collaboration Session - Citizen Science and Ethics
Do we ever stop to consider the ethical issues and dilemmas that arise within citizen science and other participatory processes? And what are the causes of, and possible solutions to, such issues? Are our organisations even adequately equipped to navigate these issues? Join our Collaboration Session on ethics in citizen science to discuss and work through these key issues. For this session, we will welcome the contributions of Stefanie Schuerz and Matimba Swana, who will share some of their experiences working on this topic. The session will consist of a presentation from the speakers, as well as a participatory group activity related to the topic. Information about the speakers: Stefanie Schuerz is a sociologist who works as a researcher and project manager at the Centre for Social Innovation (ZSI). Her primary focus is on evaluation and impact assessment, multi-stakeholder engagement and citizen science, research ethics and integrity, as well as data ethics and open science. Stefanie has coordinated processes for the co-design of R&I policy recommendations and has collaborated with funding agencies in the development and evaluation of ethical participatory activities. Matimba Swana is a PhD student at the University of Bristol with experience working in the UK Government Office for Science, Stemcell Technologies, and the Medical Research Network. Her research centres on cancer nanomedicine, swarm robotics, and bioethics, particularly regarding regulatory frameworks for cancer trials using nanoswarm technology, with a focus on Patient and Public Involvement. She co-founded PROTEAS to promote sustainable practices in robotics and Black and Brown in Bioethics to advance racial equity in the UK bioethics community, and serves on various committees related to cancer research and the arts.
ECS project showcase: Sharing insights and facilitating dialogue in citizen science
Join the ECS project at the online event “ECS project showcase: Sharing insights and facilitating dialogue in citizen science” taking place on 27 February 2024, 12-13:30h CET. We will share the project’s insights on the topics of data practices in citizen science, impact evaluation, the ECS Academy (training and capacity building) and policy priorities of ECS in four input presentations. The second part of the event is interactive: engage in conversation with other participants around these topics in breakout rooms, facilitating the exchange of experiences and knowledge. Whether you’re looking to learn more ECS and its related topics or possess an in-depth understanding of citizen science training, policy priorities/recommendations, impact evaluation and data practices, this event promises to offer something valuable for everyone interested. We look forward to seeing you there.
Monitoring and Evaluating the impact of Citizen Science Hubs
The webinar is a combined effort of the INCENTIVE and the TIME4CS projects. During the webinar, participants will have the opportunity to dive into aspects of monitoring and evaluating the impact of Citizen Science Hubs, including (i) a step-by-step approach to how to create an M&E framework to assess the impact of the Hubs; (ii) an evaluation approach to monitor and evaluate the impact of the institutional changes made by Research Performing Organisations that aim to lead to a better and more effective engagement of citizens in research. Furthermore, (iii) a guest speaker from the MICS project will guide the participants through the MICS impact assessment tool and its utilities.
We are organising an hybrid scientific session at the Ocean Science Meeting, 27 Feb - 4 March 2022 on ‘The uptake of data by citizen scientists, aggregators and end-users: successes, challenges and gaps in the dataflow’ and are inviting you to submit an abstract by 29 September 2021. Please find more details of the session below. OD11 The uptake of data by citizen scientists, aggregators and end-users: successes, challenges and gaps in the dataflow Keywords: Citizen science, marine data, dataflow, interoperability, acceptance, engagement, policy, data management, validation, end user needs, sustainability, impact Organizers: Patrick Gorringe, patrick.gorringe@smhi.se, James Sprinks, jsprinks@earthwatch.org.uk, Peter Thijsse, peter@maris.nl, Emilie Breviere, emilie.breviere@smhi.se Citizen science is a particularly impactful channel to collect data and its utility has been proven on small scales, yet the groundbreaking, and absolutely necessary, potential of citizen science has yet to be realized. Over the last decade, marine citizen science projects have provided a cost-effective means to collect extensive data sets covering vast spatio-temporal scales where conventional data collection is limited in operation, such as coastal seas. However many initiatives fail to be sustainable, and fail to reach acceptance of their data by scientists and by policy makers. To be efficient and successful a project should provide data with sufficient quality, structure and availability to be used by professionals and ensure that citizen scientists realize and appreciate the impact of their contribution towards the understanding of the scientific big picture. When studying the flow of citizen science data, it follows a series of steps from the providers to the users, via data aggregators. The essential steps of this process are the acquisition, management, flow in key infrastructure, evaluation and impact analyses, use in ocean models, research and forecasting, and public visualization. The objective of the co-organizers is to provide a session during which participants will share experiences on successes and failures, needs and limitations in the data flow chain. The session wishes to be a unique niche for the numerous actors of the data flow in marine citizen science initiatives to meet and exchange. It will explore current and future collaborations, hear from invited experts about wider citizen science initiatives and discuss how marine data aggregators in its next phase can more systematically link with citizen science to not only expand the data provision from citizen science, but also find ways to encourage citizen science to work closer with data aggregators across the full value chain.
Paris Open Science European Conference (OSEC)
This international conference is being organised with the strong support of the Ministry of Higher Education, Research and Innovation, the French Academy of Sciences, the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS),the National Institute of Health and Medical Research (Inserm), the High Council for Evaluation of Research and Higher Education (Hcéres), the French National Research Agency (ANR), the University of Lorraine and the University of Nantes. The main topics addressed during this conference come within the framework of the transformation of the research and innovation ecosystem in Europe. Particular attention will be given to transparency in health research, the necessary transformation of research evaluations, the future of scientific publishing, and the opening of codes and software produced in a scientific context.
Save the Dates: Grace final webinars
As the GRACE project comes to an end, project partners will share their findings and provide stakeholders with useful knowledge to implement RRI in research performing and funding organisations by organising a set of eight thematic webinars. From 26 October to 14 December, these webinars will each address a different topic related to GRACE, with the participation of experts inside and outside of the project. Topics will include: (1) Main considerations to take into account at the start of an RRI project; (2) Making the case for public engagement; (3) GEP in Research Funding organisations; (4) Public Engagement from the research funding organisations’ perspective; (5) Different approaches to Evaluation; (6) Bottom-up RRI initiatives; (7) Ethics and Data Protection in humanities research; (8) RRI and Sustainability.
Methodologies & Evaluation: Setting up Youth Citizen Social Science
Young people in Europe are facing many challenges with regard to social inclusion (e.g. social participation, employment, social belonging). There is a pressing need to develop more knowledge and innovation to create more inclusive and youth-friendly societies. One way to contribute to this is through Citizen Social Science with young people - Youth Citizen Social Science (Y-CSS). This webinar offers an opportunity for exchange on doing Y-CSS in practice and it seeks to mobilise your expertise and feedback for the YouCount project. Members of the project are developing a framework for setting up case studies in several countries. The challenge is to translate the many ideas surrounding youth citizen social science into practical research and innovations. They will present their concepts and seek your feedback and discussion on how local case studies and integrating frameworks can be designed. Claire Murray (ECSA) will get us started with essential points for practically preparing for youth participation. To illustrate an ambitious ways of how this can be done in a European project, Julie Ridley (UCLan) will give us an overview on the multiple case study approach that is used in YouCount. Then there will be a series of in-depth discussions on key aspects of setting up Y-CSS projects in practice.
The D-NOSES Methodology and results to tackle odour pollution using citizen science
This webinar is the second of the D-NOSES Conference on Odour Management and Citizen Science series. Experts will present the D-NOSES scientific & innovative methodology to tackle odour pollution through citizen science as well as the pilot results. Additional aspects such as energizer, data validation and inclusiveness are addressed, besides an evaluation of the work done.
CoAct Webinar: Co-Shaping Evaluation in Citizen Science?
Participatory evaluation is an approach that aims at giving voice to the stakeholders of an intervention in its evaluation design, process and results. This webinar will shed light on the specificities of this methodology, as well as challenges and opportunities related to its application in citizen science. The aim of the webinar is to furthermore provide an overview on co-evaluation as a strategy and to discuss which respective approaches and options have been available for a long time in participatory research and citizen science, how they have been received, what opportunities they have opened up, what obstacles have been overcome, but also what we can learn from them for the future.