Una Europa Podcast

Citizen Science Podcast #6 | Building Bridges between Campus and Community

Episode Summary

This episode features Margaret Gold from Universiteit Leiden’s Citizen Science Lab. Margaret explains how Citizen Science connects universities and society through collaborative projects, from sensor-equipped bird nests to neighbourhood research. The episode also explores the science of citizen science and the opportunities that training programmes for students and researchers can offer.

Episode Notes

Our Citizen Science podcast series takes you on a tour across our 11 partner universities. Explore a new campus each episode and talk to members of our Una Europa community, to active citizens, volunteers and experts. They tell us more about their involvement with citizen science projects that want to make positive, impactful contributions to their local communities, cities, countries or Europe.

For the latest episode of our Citizen Science Podcast, we sat down with citizen science expert Margaret Gold from Universiteit Leiden. As head of the Citizen Science Lab, Margaret supports researchers across all Leiden faculties in working with citizens, schools, community groups, and other partners.

Together with Margaret we explore what citizen science is, how it manifests in universities (sometimes without the label), and how it helps institutions build stronger connections with society. Margaret also shares the origin story of the Citizen Science Lab: starting in the astronomy department, it grew into a university-wide hub that supports projects across diverse disciplines, from the natural sciences to the humanities and social sciences.

Margaret then shares insights from two projects to illustrate in more detail what the Leiden Citizen Science Lab does. The first project equips bird nests with sensors to study climate-related changes, involving volunteers in collecting the data. Another is rooted in a Leiden neighbourhood, where residents and researchers jointly investigate local matters and turn their findings into potential changes in the city.

The episode also looks at the “science of citizen science” within the wider open science movement – its challenges, its opportunities, and how opening up research to the public is reshaping universities. Margaret highlights the growing number of citizen science training programmes for students and researchers, as well as projects in primary and high schools.