Encouraging citizen science growth in Europe is the main objective of the European Citizen Science Association (ECSA). To fulfill this purpose, ECSA counts on an Executive Board with broad expertise on citizen science that works in the association’s strategic vision and actions. Each year ECSA holds an Annual General Meeting where every three years all organization members vote for the five to seven persons that will be part of the new Board of Directors. Last November 27th, during the latest annual meeting, Jaume Piera, the Cos4Cloud coordinator, researcher at the ICM-CSIC, and associate researcher at CREAF, and Rosa Arias, co-leader of the co-design methodology at the Cos4Cloud project and Science for Change CEO, were elected to be part of the Board of Directors.
ECSA’s board of directors advises the executive committee by setting the scientific guidelines for ECSA’s work that will establish the ECSA’s strategy during the following three years: in which events should ECSA participate, projects to support as a partner, etc. The board of directors meets every two months and collaboratively makes these kinds of decisions by a simple majority.
ECSA members also voted four more members to be part of the Board of Directors: Gitte Kragh, British co-chair at the Ecological Society Citizen Science and co-founder of the Danish Citizen Science Netværket; Dr. Barbara Kieslinger, who works at the Centre of Social Innovation; Martin Brocklehurst, founder member of ECSA and the Citizen Science Global Partnership and former Executive Manager of the Environment Agency (England & Wales); and Dr. Susanne Tönsmann, who is managing director of the Participatory Science Academy at the University of Zurich.
‘I think the new Board of Directors has a huge potential, all of us have citizen science expertise from different perspectives, that is why I think it will be very enriching!’, states Jaume
‘I think the new Board of Directors has a huge potential, all of us have citizen science expertise from different perspectives, that is why I think it will be very enriching!’, states Jaume. One of his main interests in citizen science focuses on the technologies and infrastructures that facilitate citizen science development. Apart from being the Cos4Cloud coordinator, whose objective is to connect the Citizen Observatories with the European Open Science Cloud, he participates in the H2020 Panelfit project, which addresses the ethical and legal framework’s challenges for citizen-science digital data.
At the meeting, Dr. Susanne Hecker was also appointed as the new ECSA chair. She is Deputy Head of the Ecosystem Services department at the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research – UFZ. Her research focuses on the aims, capacities, and experiences of citizen science in the German, European, and international contexts. On the other hand, Enrico M. Balli, the Sissa Medialab CEO, and, recently, principal consultant at the company Stickydot, , will be the new vice-chair. ECSA members also agreed to appoint Professor Johannes Vogel, the general director of the Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin, as ECSA’s president, a new association position.
Other new appointees were the treasurer: Svetlana Marie-Claire Klessova, and the advisory board: Dan Stanton, Darlene Cavalier, Henrietta L. Moore, Julie Dirwimmer, Sven Schade, José Miguel Rubio Iglesias, Renee Sieber. Find out more about them here.
Three new ECSA working groups were also formally approved during the meeting. These will focus on: Citizen science for health; Citizen science and universities, and Storytelling and other arts. To stay tuned about these new groups, visit ECSA’s website!