“Volunteers’ diverse and unexpected knowledge practices in contributory citizen science” is the first academic paper that resulted from my PhD research project. It is published open-access in the journal BMC Ecology and Evolution, within the special collection “Citizen Science in Ecological Research.” The paper can be read online and downloaded from here: doi.org/10.1186/s12862-025-02415-6.
The paper talks about the valuable and diverse work that citizen science volunteers do, even in projects that formally only ask them to collect biodiversity data. Participants’ knowledge practices include tasks in knowledge production, learning and teaching, and knowledge application well beyond the requests of contributory programs (see a visual summary in Figure 1 below). Volunteers’ willingness to analyze data, educate people in their communities, advocate, and improve their environments is inspiring.
As I argue in the paper, recognizing the agency of participants in determining what participation entails for them allows us to paint a richer and more dynamic picture of citizen science. For citizen science practitioners, the paper is an invitation to avoid making assumptions about volunteers, such as assuming that they lack knowledge, that they are only signing up and collecting data as individuals, that they are only doing as they are asked (so, thinking that participation can be pre-defined and contained), and/or that the crucial logic for increasing participation is “making it easy.” Based on the findings, citizen science programs may want to consider the many ways that these “additional” practices carried out by some of the volunteers are indeed aligned with program objectives, and what could be gained if these additional practices are supported.
Acknowledgements:
I’ve had the honor and privilege to learn from and think with Dr Stephanie Lavau and Prof Kathryn Williams, my supervisors and co-authors of this paper.
I am grateful to the project team from the Melbourne Waterway Research-Practice Partnership. Thank you Yvonne Cabuang, Rhys Coleman, and James Frazer for your ongoing support, as well as all the members of The Waterway Ecosystem Research Group. I also appreciate the interest and support from Birdlife Australia staff.
My PhD research was possible thanks to the study participants, mostly frog and bird monitoring volunteers, that engaged with me in conversations during the in-depth interviews, and allowed me to go monitoring biodiversity with them.
Finally, I am grateful to and acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the unceded land on which I conducted the fieldwork, the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung, Bunurong, Wadawurrung, Gunditjmara, Peramangk, and Kaurna-Miyurna peoples.
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