Topics:
SwafS-01-2016: Participatory research and innovation via Science Shops
SwafS-03-2016-2017: Support to research organisations to implement gender equality plans
SwafS-04-2016: Opening Research Organisations in the European Research Area
SwafS-07-2016: Training on Open Science in the European Research Area
SwafS-09-2016: Moving from constraints to openings, from red lines to new frames in Horizon
SwafS-15-2016: Open Schooling and collaboration on science education
SwafS-16-2016: Mapping the Ethics and Research Integrity Normative Framework
SwafS-17-2016: The Ethics of informed consent in novel treatment including a gender perspective
SwafS-18-2016: The Ethics of technologies with high socio-economic impact and Human Rights relevance
SwafS-19-2016: Networking of National representatives and resources centres on Gender in R&I
SwafS-25-2016: Celebrating European Science
Field of expertise related to the topic:
the CREA (Research Center on Alpine Ecosystems) is a research NGO based in Chamonix Mont Blanc (France) with two missions that we carry out with the
same rigor : research on alpine ecology and knowledge transfer to various publics on ecology and scientific education. Our public ranges from decision makers (land planners and local authorities) to school pupils, to individuals and protected areas.
More information on www.creamontblanc.org
Some of our programs and achievements:
- Phenoclim (www.phenoclim.org) is one of the oldest participatory science program in France.
When we set it up in 2004, citizen science was only nascent in France. We since then mobilized over 5,000 observers, over the Alps (France, Italy and Switzerland), the Pyrenees and other French mountain range. These observers range from individuals, schools, NGOs, protected areas, forest managers and this mix of public is a great richness for us. In Phenoclim, we try not to compromise either the pedagogical side of citizen science nor the seriousness of the research. We have a PhD student in-house researching the data collected through our volunteers' network and give back science to these observers. We recently developed multimedia tools (website and field App). Our next challenges are to go further in the engagement of these observers (data analysis…), finding new interactive ways to engage them and diffusing the program into companies' staff or other innovative avenues to diffuse citizen science into unexpected srtuctures.
- Mont-Blanc Atlas (www.atlasmontblanc.org) : beyond the research and monitoring aspect of putting an emblematic mountain range under surveillance, the Mont-Blanc Atlas reflects on new ways to open citizen science to new publics. We work on engaging ad-hoc observers such as tourists but through this we work on redefining the relationship between the researcher and the "public", in the field and through interactive tools. The Mont-Blanc Atlas is alos an achievement in the fact that a partnership with one of the largest company in France in telecoms has helped us unlock technical issues and help the company mobilize its staff on an environmental and scientific endeavour.
Potential contribution to the project: our goal is to innovate and reflect on our experience of citizen science, to tackle new ways of engaging our various public on science and ecology. We are also interested in how non-academic institutions can be active in research, based on our 20-year unusual experience of conducting research in an NGO (in parallel with science education and ecology sensitization).
We would for example be keen to participate in a project inventing new citizen science processes, that includes both researchers (social scientists, didacticians, scientists using citizen science data…) and new approches (artists, web developpers…). We are interested in being a "smart" field experimenter of new processes, for example :
- building and experimenting innovative pedagogical tools to reach out to more people in citizen science,
- pushing citizen science in ecology beyond data collection (building the protocols together, analyzing the data…)
- having researchers' support to reflect on our new tourism approach, ie bringing tourists to do citizen science observations with or without scientists on their side.
In short, we would happily be field "guinea pigs", be part of an interactive and transdisciplinary approach. We would also be willing to share our long experience and/or train institutions on our current approach to citizen science and of carrying out research outside of (but in close relation with) the academic world
Contact Person:
Irene Alvarez
CREA - Research Center on Alpine Ecosystems
Observatoire du Mont-Blanc 67 lacets du Belvédère
74400
Chamonix Mont-Blanc
France
Phone: +33 (0)6 68 05 63 58 / +33 (0)4