Library participatory research and citizen science support
Learn more about Participatory Research and Citizen Science and discover the resources that the library support service has on offer, including support for project leaders, participants, and students.
Library Participatory Research Services
Our services seek to support all forms of participatory research taking place across the University, which we recognise comes with its own set of unique challenges. Anyone with an institutional login can view our catalogue of services and resources on our SharePoint site. If you do not have a login, please feel free to contact us directly via email.
For staff and research students at the University of Edinburgh:
Visit The Library Citizen Science and Participatory Research SharePoint [Staff and Students]
For external enquiries:
Events
In addition to our reoccurring Discovery Session and Showcase events, we also coordinate and host training workshops, networking activities and promotional events relating to participatory research. Sign up to the newsletter, subscribe to the events pages on SharePoint, or follow our Open Research Eventbrite profile to keep up to date.
| Learn more about our Showcase Events | Follow the Open Research Eventbrite Profile |
What are participatory research and citizen science?
Citizen Science, Crowdsourcing, Community Research - these are familiar terms to many people. They are all used to describe ways for non-specialists to get involved in research. 'Participatory Research' is an umbrella term, encompassing all of these approaches and many more. This includes 'Public and Patient Involvement ' (often found in medicine), 'Participatory Action Research' (usually based in the social sciences and education), co-production (as seen in arts based work), and many, many more.
Citizen Science is one important way of undertaking participatory research. In the UK, we often (but not always) think of it as being restricted to just the sciences (typically those to do with biology, health, and ecology) but it is frequently used to mean the same thing as 'participatory research', especially in other European nations.
For participants, this kind of research is a unique opportunity to engage with research and to help advance discovery, to learn new skills and experiences, along with gaining many other benefits as part of the process. For researchers it is a chance to open the doors to their research and engage in a direct meaningful way with a non-specialist audience, and at the same time work with their participants to gain insight, understanding, and support that would otherwise be impossible.
Learn more about the various types of participatory research
Stay in touch
Sign up to the Open Research Newsletter
Learn about some projects at the University
‘Our Outdoors’ is a citizen science project which aims to contribute to our understanding of how shared outdoor spaces can affect our health and wellbeing. The project calls on individuals, communities and groups, to get involved and learn about the health aspects of range of local outdoor spaces. From streets and town squares to beaches, public parks and beyond. Any spaces can be included as long as they are outside and freely open to anyone (e.g. not a private garden). A lot of excellent research has been done, or is currently being done, to explore the link between outdoor spaces and health. The vast majority has focused on green spaces and physical activity, commonly in urban settings. Yet, despite this work, there is still a lot that we do not know. The Our Outdoors project will work with members of the public to understand how different shared outdoor spaces across the UK impact on health and wellbeing and what populations benefit from these spaces and why. It uses in-situ measurements, meaning the survey will capture citizen’s feelings about a space in the moment they are using that space. The data collected can then be translated into both a better understanding of the health impacts of these spaces, and into real positive change.
Learn more about the Our Outdoors project [External Link]
Get involved in Our Outdoors as a participant [External Link]
The 'From the Archives to the Future' digital exhibition was funded by the ScotPEN Wellcome Engagement Award which was awarded in addition to the Wellcome Trust funded project, Speaking Out: cataloguing advocacy, support and empowerment in the Lothian Gay and Lesbian Switchboard archives. Lothian Health Services Archive, together with Workshop Co-Ordinator Eloise Birtwhistle, led outreach events to engage local LGBT+ groups with the history of the Lothian Gay and Lesbian Switchboard (LGLS), and to help those who took part develop their creative skills. Participants from LGBT Health and Wellbeing’s LGBT Age Project (aged over 50) and LGBT Youth Scotland (ages 13-25) were brought together and guided through a series of writing and zine making workshops. The workshops were designed to be informal and intergenerational, and by bringing together different age groups, participants examined the past and the present, and imagined the future. This project is an example of how creative workshops demonstrate the power of archives to stimulate discussion on contemporary experiences and can work to break down barriers for community groups accessing archival material in institutional settings.
Visit the 'From the Archives to the Future' Exhibition
Learn more about the Lothian Health Services Archive
Sensing in the Community is a second year course exclusively for 2nd year undergraduate students enrolled on degree programmes in the Schools of Engineering and Chemistry, and the Deanery of Biomedical Sciences. Students form interdisciplinary research teams and work together to investigate research questions around health and wellbeing that have been codesigned with 'Our Health' patient groups and local community partners. The programme encouraged engagement with real-world problems around health and wellbeing that respond directly to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, and in line with citizen science and participatory research practices, treated students and community group as equal partners in the research process. In this way it combined experiential knowledge and propositional knowledge to develop innovative research questions and find solutions to problems in lung health.
In the 2022-23 year, the teams worked with
the 'Cheyne Gang', a community singing group for people living with long term respiratory conditions such as COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease), Asthma, Bronchiectasis - in fact any respiratory condition that causes long term breathlessness. With the guidance of programme mentors from the Our Health Programme the students worked on a number of inter-disciplinary, collaborative research projects. Their outcomes ranged from a spacer for inhalers that used a traffic light system to help the user ensure a correct dosage, to an app that helped map pathways that avoided triggers (such as pollution or steep hills).
Find out about the The Cheyne Gang [External Link]
Learn more about the Sensing in the Community programme
Learn more about the EPSRC 'Our Health' Interdisciplinary Research Programme'
The Lyell Project is a project that brings together 17 international volunteers to help digitise, tag, and transcribe the notebooks of Sir Charles Lyell (1797-1875). In 2019, after a fundraising campaign the University of Edinburgh purchased a collection of 294 scientific notebooks kept by Sir Charles Lyell . When added to an existing collection of Lyell papers and specimens already held by the University, and soon after joined by a third tranche of family correspondence and annotated manuscripts, altogether these records create an astoundingly complete corpus of material.
Since the acquisition, the focus has been on granting access to the diverse range of valuable materials that make up the Lyell Collection. By digitising, cataloguing, and transcribing and then adding in subjects and agents, the hope is to create a rich catalogue entry that will ensure ready access to the materials and the wealth of knowledge contained within. Considering the difficult handwriting and the complexity of the topic, we looked for tools to support us. We have used Transkribus, and have developed ways to involve others. By using their free, front-page trial facility – no log in required, no tokens or costs involved – and their public Bentham model, we have found that we can gently introduce volunteers to the process of transcription and associated research, to help us build the content we need. With current volunteers based in the UK, America and Cape Town, and with library, geology and history backgrounds, we come together virtually to collaborate on hard to decipher sections, sharing subject and place expertise.
The project is still on going, and you can keep up to date with the Lyell Project via the Project Blog or Twitter.
Visit the Lyell Project Blog [External Link]
Follow the Project Twitter Account (@lyelltime) [External Link]
Viking Genes is a project including four studies: Viking III, Viking II, Viking Health Study (Shetland), and the Orkney Complex Disease Study (ORCADES). The four studies explore the risk factors of complex health conditions the Hebrides, Orkney and Shetland. ORCADES recruited volunteers from 2005 - 2011 and the The Viking Health Study (Shetland) which recruited volunteers between 2013 - 15 both sought to discover the genes and variants that influence the risk of common, complex diseases.
Viking II launched in 2020 aimed to better understand what might cause health conditions such as heart disease, eye disease, stroke, diabetes and others. Viking III launched in the summer of 2022, recruiting 2,000 people into the study with 2 or more grandparents from the Hebrides and means that over 10,000 volunteers are involved in Viking Genes. With data from these new volunteers, the team will be able to gain a better understanding of genetics and health across the Scottish Isles.
Throughout the Viking Genes project volunteers have played crucial role in the studies. Not only have they been an invaluable source of data - sharing their medical records and personal histories - they have also helped to shape the research. A questionnaire surveyed their priorities, and early "fact-finding missions" as part of the 2004 ORCADES study allowed the team to meet with community leaders, medical staff and potential volunteers who asked them to study the causes of the high rates of Multiple Sclerosis in Orkney.
All of this participatory research has supported engagement efforts - allowing both the volunteers and their communities to connect more closely with research, with lectures, open days and festivals, and a frequent presence at the Orkney Science Festival.
Learn more about public involvement and engagement in Viking Genes studies
Learn more about the four Viking Genes studies
Children and Young People from all over Scotland took part in the Everyday Heroes programme to influence the Government’s plan of action The Equally Safe Delivery Plan. Young survivors of gender-based violence (like domestic abuse, rape and sexual assault) spoke out about how services and the justice system should be improved. Lots more children and young people gave their views on how to improve societal attitudes to abuse and achieve gender equality. Find out about young survivors’ top priorities for action here through our Child/young person-friendly reports, including BSL films, a survey infographic and posters.
The programme incorporated collaborative artistic approaches from the design of the project, workshop materials to engage 125 young people including survivors, to elicit young people’s lightbulb ideas for change. Young artists transformed these into illustrations for events, briefings, pledge postcards, the website, and reports to influence policy. A series of artworks was created as a result of a collaboration between Everyday Heroes young advisors, Scottish Women’s Aid, Rape Crisis Scotland, Barnardos, Claire Houghton (social policy lecturer at the University of Edinburgh), and Harvey Dingwall (artist and illustration lecturer at Edinburgh College of Art).
Visit the Everyday Heroes website [External Site]
Learn about the Government's plan of action 'The Equally Safe Delivery Plan'
Discover Amy Moss, Illustrator of the artwork (above) [External Site]
Would you like your project to be featured? Get in touch n.e.coleman@ed.ac.uk