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Paper short abstract

Citizen science is often framed as democratizing environmental research. This paper examines it as a site of knowledge co-production, asking how STS can move beyond token inclusion to shape collaborative environmental research while maintaining critical reflexivity.

Paper long abstract

Citizen science initiatives have proliferated across environmental research, from biodiversity monitoring and pollution tracking to climate observation and landscape documentation. These projects are frequently framed as mechanisms for public engagement, collecting data at scale, and democratizing science. Yet citizen science also raises deeper questions about how knowledge and expertise is negotiated and produced across institutional boundaries, and how participation reshapes the governance of environmental knowledge.

This paper examines citizen science as a site where STS can move beyond symbolic inclusion toward meaningful collaboration within environmental research programs. Drawing on examples from several environmental monitoring initiatives, I explore how citizen science projects operate as socio-technical infrastructures that bring together scientists, policymakers, and volunteer citizens in the co-production of knowledge. While such collaborations promise more inclusive research practices, they also reveal tensions around data quality, authority, ownership, “citizenship”, and the distribution of epistemic labor.

I argue that STS has a crucial role to play not merely as an observer of citizen science but as an active participant in shaping how these collaborations are designed and sustained. STS approaches can illuminate how participatory research simultaneously expands and constrains forms of knowledge, reproducing hierarchies as it challenges them. By analyzing citizen science through the lens of co-production, boundary-work, and epistemic justice, the paper uses STS approaches to ask whether citizen science can serve as a model for deeper interdisciplinary collaboration—or whether it risks becoming another tokenistic form of participation within contemporary impact-driven research landscapes.