Breaking Down Boundaries with and for Citizens

Citizens' active participation in scientific development and knowledge production, commonly referred to as "citizen science", has received unprecedented attention in recent decades (Haklay et al. 2014; Hecker et al. 2018; Vohland et al. 2021). The past decades have indeed seen a rapid growth in in this field, as a response to the need for new types of knowledge in the face of complex and global challenges to tackle. Part of this success relates to the fact that citizen science is operating at the interface of science, society and policy. It invites scientific communities to open up to non-professional stakeholders and, thereby, explore new avenues for fostering research and innovation, building trust in science, but also democratising knowledge and forging tools of governance. While growing bigger, more ambitious and more integrated, citizen science has also adopted more and more varied forms. In this context, citizens are emerging as key contributors to an increasing number of projects, not only as passive data collectors but also as active agents of research activities and strategic agendas. The Una.Resin project aims at facilitating citizens participation to science in all its diversity by building a community of good practice inside Una Europa's alliance, encouraging institutional changes necessary to promote citizen science, and implementing a program of actions for knowledge sharing, mutual learning and team cooperation. To achieve this goal, a first step will be taken with this workshop, during which participants will share their expertise, their practices, the difficulties they have faced, and how these can be overcome, in order to create a broader understanding of what is – and what could be – citizen science within the Una Europa Alliance.