New year, new podcast. Earlier this month, the new podcast series “Exploring Citizen Science: Can research and society be (re)connected?” was launched. It is a podcast that explores the world of Citizen Science, as a discipline and philosophy. Host and journalist Alexander Damiano Ricci travels across Europe and holds interviews with researchers and project managers who are part of the COESO research project. Damiano embarks on this journey driven by the feeling that, over the past few years, science and experts appear to have experienced a sort of backlash from society.

In fact, the host believes that many citizens distrust experts and scientific knowledge out front. Yet, the discipline of Citizen Science says it aims at opening the doors of science to everyone. Within Citizen Science projects citizens can become knowledge producers themselves, just like researchers. So the question is: can Citizen Science help to (re)connect research and society?

“The podcast is turning out better than I had expected…” reflected Damiano, who serves as editorial director at Bulle Media and the host and journalist of the podcast. It’s not that he thought the series wouldn’t be good, but it turns out that he is actually more interested in the topic of citizen science than he realized he was.

In the first three episodes (“The Ivory Tower”, “Entering the rabbit hole”, and “About pilots and blank stares”), Alexander takes us on a journey through his own thought processes—how he wrapped his head around what and why the project is—while providing context from political, historical, and academic perspectives.

You can access and listen the podcasts on Spotify here.

More information here.