Citizen science, anthropology and intercultural transdisciplinarity

Author(s)

Sophie Elixhauser, Theresa Gusenleitner

Abstract

Citizen science is research conducted with the participation of the public with a view to democratising academia and facilitating large-scale and long-term research. Citizen science is currently gaining popularity, particularly in the natural sciences, yet the relationship between citizen science and anthropology is less clear-cut. This can be attributed to anthropology’s long experience in working with non-academic stakeholders and to the democratic and ontological turns resulting in various similar and sometimes overlapping participatory methods. Drawing on the authors’ anthropological engagement in an interdisciplinary citizen science project collaborating with climatologists and school students from Greenland and Austria, we explore the value of citizen science for anthropology, and vice versa. While some of the basic premises of citizen science are not new, we argue that anthropology stands to benefit from citizen science in two ways. First, citizen science offers elaborate methods to facilitate the involvement of a potentially wider public and may further discourses about public anthropology. Second, it can be of great value in interdisciplinary projects, providing a shared framework for both the social and natural scientists involved. Anthropology in turn may refine citizen science with its reflective perspective on epistemic and ontological questions.

Organisation(s)

Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology

Journal

Sociologus. Journal for Social Anthropology

No. of pages

22

ISSN

0038-0377

DOI

https://doi.org/10.3790/soc.2025.1461401

Publication date

2025

Peer reviewed

Yes

Austrian Fields of Science 2012

504017 Cultural anthropology, 504009 Ethnology

Keywords

Portal url

https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/d2bdab1d-3ce6-4cd3-98da-0aca4fae7edb