Project: Experts, expertise and citizen science: A case study of air quality monitoring
Outline: In 2018, the newly-formed Barry Citizen Science Group in Barry, South Wales, approached me about a land use conflict. In 2017, an Energy-from-Biomass incinerator owned by Aviva Investors Holdings Ltd was built under controversial circumstances in the regenerating docks area in the centre of the town in 2017. The plant was given its license in 2018 by Natural Resources Wales but the granting of full planning permission by the Vale of Glamorgan Planning Office remains disputed. In 2021, my colleagues and I began examining the barriers and enablers of co-producing environmental data - so-called 'Community Science' - on local air quality in the context of Civil Society, Expertise, Urban Planning and the Circular Economy.
Funding: Economic and Social Research Council
Dates: 2021 to 2023
Research Institution: Wales Institute for Social and Economic Research and Data (WISERD), part of the School of Social Sciences at Cardiff University
Technical Partners: Fab Lab Barcelona & Think Air Ltd (Llanelli)
Principal Investigator: Prof Rob Evans
Co-Investigator: Dr Jamie Lewis
Research Associate: Dr Nick Hacking
Role: Using participatory action research, I liaised with members of the community, established a local network of nine air quality monitors, trained twelve 'community scientists' to use their monitors and then begin analysing their baseline data in workshops. I shared knowledge of the planning and licensing systems in Wales, undertook and analysed 31 qualitative interviews, and prepared costings and briefings.
Outputs:
2023 - I gave a television interview promoting WISERD's research into citizen science.
2023 - I was the author of a press article about the project in The Conversation.
2023 - I was second author on a peer-reviewed publication in Citizen Science: Theory and Practice.
2023 - I was first author on a peer-reviewed publication in Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space.
2024 - I was first author on a peer-reviewed publication in Minerva.
Communities - citizen science
