20 March 2020

New Europe College, together with 6 institutions in Europe, have been granted funding from EU’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program for the project titled Citizen Science for Environmental Citizenship: Backyard Birding and the Potential for Cultivating Green Engagement (EnviroCitizen). The project, which will run for four years, until March 2024, aims to research how to encourage environmental citizenship through engagement with citizen science.

The work will be coordinated by the University of Stavanger; the parting institutions are: New Europe College, the Estonian Academy of Sciences, Cyprus Center for Environmental Research and Education, Radboud University, University of Extremadura and Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences.

The researchers will examine how activities related to bird watching and bird counting can help strengthen environmental awareness and green citizenship. One example of such activities is the annual garden bird count, where people are encouraged to record all the birds they see in their garden on a particular weekend.

“This type of citizen research, often called citizen science, has become a standard model for the implementation of research projects. Here, ordinary people participate in the collection of data,” said project manager Finn Arne Jørgensen, Professor of Environmental History at the University of Stavanger.

More details about the project at envirocitizen.eu.