Accepted Poster
Poster Short Abstract
Experiences and lessons learned from three citizen social science projects in a structural change region in Germany. Each project characterized with a different participatory level addressing one of the following topics: energy, mobility, and nutrition.
Poster Abstract
The Rhenish district in Western Germany is characterized by its lignite mining, and is therefore one of the three designated structural change regions within Germany’s coal phase-out. The project “MehrWertRevier” aims to contribute to the region’s transformation by focusing on four areas of action, one being Citizen Science.
Within MehrWertRevier three individual citizen social science projects focusing on the fields energy, mobility, and nutrition were conducted. In each project we used different levels of participation and worked together with citizen scientists from the region in several participatory workshops. In the first project (energy), we worked together with citizen scientists who were plug-in solar device owners and investigated the distribution and use of those devices. The second project (mobility) addressed the topic of sustainable mobility, especially public transportation, in villages close to the lignite mining area. Together with citizens from these villages, we applied the design thinking approach and through a participatory process determined the specific research topic. In the third project (nutrition), we worked together with young adults and also citizens volunteering in the field of nutrition (e. g. community-supported agriculture) focusing on nutritional information and nutritional skills.
With our poster, we would like to provide deeper insights into these projects and their designs. Moreover, we want to illustrate our experiences and lessons learned based on these projects. In particular, we would like to depict our learnings from working together with citizen scientists, the implementation of workshops and the work in a project team consisting of members from different institutions.
Poster Session