​Exciting news! The first scientific results of the YouCount project will be presented at the ESPAnet2021 conference, which will be held on 31st August - 3rd September, 2021 online. 

 About the conference

ESPAnet's 18th Annual and first ONLINE Conference is hosted by the Social Policy and Social Work Team of the KU Leuven Centre for Sociological Research (Belgium). The conference will be held on 31st August - 3rd September, 2021 online. See for more info:

Home - Espanet2021 ONLINE Conference — KU Leuven congressen

 The relation between citizen science and social innovation

​Gyorgy Pataki (ESSRG),  Egle Butkeviciene (Kaunas University of Technology) and Reidun Norvoll (OSLOMET) will speak about  the conceptual relations between social innovation and citizen science, presenting results of literature review.  

Citizen social science and social innovation have much in common regarding their conceptualisations in research. They are both considered as co-creative, collaborative endeavours involving multiple and diverse actors; as processes, they are supposed to run in an inclusive and participatory fashion; and both are expected to follow a democratic ideal aiming for transforming social structures towards empowerment and justice for less powerful social actors. Citizen science might also be considered as a social innovation in research, but at the same time it might appear as an innovative way to develop social innovation (Butkeviciene et al, 2021).

YouCount, an EU H2020 project, will implement a youth-focused citizen social science project aiming at exploring, better understanding, and strengthening the social inclusion of vulnerable and marginalised young people. This youth citizen social science (Y-CSS) project will include an analysis of citizen social science as a socially innovative process. Thus, the presentation aims at a better understanding of the actual or potential links between citizen science and social innovation research and explore new ways of contributing to this field of knowledge​.