About Us

The Citizen Science Global Partnership (CSGP) is a network-of-networks that seeks to promote and advance citizen science for a sustainable world. It brings together existing citizen science networks and practitioners with actors representing policy, business, and community-based perspectives and civil society organizations.

CSGP GOALS

NETWORK

Establish partnerships across geographies, disciplines, and stakeholders

COLLABORATE

Grow a global movement of citizen science researchers, practitioners and citizen scientists by supporting North-South collaborations

ADVOCATE

Promote Citizen Science as a unifying, enabling and multiplying force for change

ADVANCE

Advance the understanding of Citizen Science and its impact on sustainable development

STATUS

PARTNERSHIP

The CSGP was created by the 6 national and regional Citizen Science Associations, namely ECSA, AAPS, ACSA, CitSciAsia, CitSciAfrica, and RICAP, with support from IIASA, GCEOA, Citizen Cyber Lab, CS Zurich, SaSSA, UNESCO, and the Wilson Centre.

FOUNDERS

CSGP was legally established as a non-profit association in Austria in Oct 2022. BOKU (Vienna, Austria) and UNIGE (Geneva, Switzerland) were the founding members. IIASA (Laxenberg, Austria) serves as the host organization for the general secretariat, offering strategic, managerial, operational, administrative and financial support.

HUBS

UNIGE and CS Zurich jointly run the Swiss Hub of the CSGP, located at the SDG Solution Space in Geneva, in the heart of the international Geneva quarter. CS Zurich provides strategic communications support.

Strategy

CSGP Objectives

  • CSGP promotes and supports the collaboration of continental, regional,l and national citizen science associations, as a network-of-
    networks, to further the use of citizen science on a global scale, and to
    tackle global sustainability challenges.

  • CSGP coordinates actions with international organizations, national agencies, research institutions, public and non-government organizations, private companies, individuals and established and developing citizen science networks, which share the 
    goal of addressing global sustainability
    issues through citizen science.

  • CSGP establishes and leads global communities of practice and working groups that advance citizen science.

  • CSGP offers strategic guidance and support for the exchange of knowledge, practices, and lessons learned, and encourages the scaling up of citizen science initiatives.

  • CSGP promotes Open Science standards for citizen science, including the collection and exchange of open and findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable (FAIR) citizen science data for global challenges.

  • CSGP fosters the development of a robust academic analysis of global citizen science, by identifying, studying and promoting the contributions of citizen science that support sustainable development.

CSGP Achievements

  • CSGP coordinated the Global Mosquito Alert Consortium (2017), demonstrating how Citizen Science projects can join forces and share knowledge, technology, and data to drive innovation and change.
  • CSGP contributed to implementing the UNESCO Open Science Recommendations, placing Citizen Science at the heart of strategies for achieving more equitable access to – and engagement with – science.
  • CSGP launched the UNICEF project on ‘learning to earning’ using Citizen Science to tackle environmental challenges at the community level, with the participation of CitSci Africa Association.

  • As of January 2025, CSGP is part of RIECS-Concept, a 3-years EU project supported by Horizon Infrastructures 2024. The ambitious goal of RIECS is to conceptualize a European Research Infrastructure for Excellence in Citizen Science.

Meet the Secretariat and the Board

General Secretariat

Dilek Fraisl

Dilek Fraisl

Managing Director

IIASA

Rosy Mondardini

Rosy Mondardini

Strategic Communication

Citizen Science Zurich

Katya Perez Guzman

Katya Perez Guzman

Operations Manager

IIASA

Managing Board

Martin Brocklehurst

Martin Brocklehurst

Chair of the Board, or Vorstandsvorsitzender

Representative European Citizen Science Association (ECSA)

Maina Muniafu

Maina Muniafu

Deputy Chair (or Vorsitzender Stellvertreter)

Representative CitSciAfrica

Steffen Fritz

Steffen Fritz

Treasurer, or Schatzmeister

IIASA

Francois Grey

Francois Grey

Representative University of Geneva

Austin Mast

Austin Mast

Representative Association for Advancing Participatory Sciences (AAPS)

Mendel Wong

Mendel Wong

Representative CitizenScience.Asia

Mariana Varese

Mariana Varese

Representative Red Iberoamericana de Ciencia Participativa (RICAP)

Katya Perez Guzman

Katya Perez Guzman

Deputy Treasurer

IIASA

Matthew Grace

Representative Australian Citizen Science Association (ACSA)

A bit of history …

The idea for a global citizen science movement originated in early 2017, when the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) invited national citizen science programmes in Europe to explore how projects such as tracking the expansion of mosquitoes species could be expanded world-wide.

Once the potential of citizen science became clear, UNEP, through the United Nations Science Policy Business Forum (UNSPBF), invited representatives of the CS community to share their ideas at the UNSPBF event held ahead of the United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA3) in December 2017. At this meeting, CS practitioners were encouraged to set up a professional group representing existing regional citizen science associations at future UN events. All the regional citizen science associations agreed to this idea, and Prof. Johannes Vogel (President of the European Citizen Science Association) announced the intention to establish a Global Secretariat and committee to work with the UN and other public partners. At this time, the Wilson Centre from the USA agreed to lead the Global Secretariat.