Postdigital Citizen Science and Humanities: how do citizen researchers understand their roles and contributions towards helping a world in crisis?  

This paper describes firstly, how a new collaborative, cross-sector project: Postdigital Citizen Science and Humanities (https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s42438-023-00443-3 )is developing through international networks which are inclusive of those in the liberal arts, social and scientific disciplines. This builds on earlier work on postdigital inclusion partnerships to grow understanding of what it means to be a citizen participant contributing to Higher Education (HE) research and knowledge exchange (KE) projects in postdigital society. The idea of the postdigital has its roots in the humanities and artistic practices, but the concept itself and how it applies in individual lives, has been much extended through the Postdigital Science and Education journal. As such, an explicit focus on postdigital themes and contexts has united researchers across disciplines and sectors to shed light on diverse postdigital positionalities (Hayes, 2021) via an inclusive ‘postdigital dialogue’ (Jandrić, et. al., 2019) to address matters of societal disadvantage.Relevant to this are findings from 2 Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) funded Human Data Interaction projects (2020-2023), showcased here. The approach developed in these collaborative, digital inclusion, data and disadvantage projects was captured in a Springer book: Human Data Interaction, Disadvantage and Skills in the Community: Enabling Cross-Sector Environments for Postdigital Inclusion and is discussed too, in this recent interview and review of the book and in a seminar exploring the rewards and challenges of including and editing peer-reviewed chapters from authors working across the wider community.Building on this work, our ‘listening events’ in regional and international locations will examine how traditional power imbalances might be shifted by hearing how citizens recruited to participate in either citizen science or citizen humanities projects, choose to identify themselves and their activities in postdigital society. Via participatory events in Zagreb, Bristol, Brighton and New Zealand initially, we will learn how important the use of language and identity are to these individuals, for meaningful participation as citizens in research and innovation with HE partners. We expect to report rich and interesting findings from our first event in Zagreb in April 2024. An AHRC Curiosity grant application will build on this, to seek funding to further the research, which holds much relevance for GALA partners who are seeking to enhance global understanding and transform lives in a world in crisis.