How can universities become spaces where scientific knowledge, civic engagement and democratic participation come together? Insights from Service-Learning and deliberative democracy offer a promising perspective for the future of Citizen Science.
Beyond participation: rethinking the relationship between science and society
What does it really mean to engage citizens in scientific research?
Citizen Science has opened new opportunities for people to contribute to scientific knowledge, bringing research closer to communities and creating connections between universities and society. Yet an important question remains: are citizens simply participating in research activities, or are they genuinely contributing to shaping the research process itself?
The distinction matters.
Inviting citizens to collect data, contribute observations or participate in scientific initiatives can create valuable opportunities for engagement. However, meaningful participation also requires opportunities to influence how problems are identified, how research questions are formulated, and how scientific findings are interpreted and translated into action.
This perspective connects Citizen Science with broader discussions about the democratic role of universities and the potential of participatory and deliberative approaches to research.
These questions are explored in the recently published volume Service Learning e Alta Formazione: Dalle competenze per l’occupabilità all’innovazione didattica e formativa (Falconi & Galeotti, Eds., 2026).
In their contribution, Universities, Students and Communities: Participatory and Deliberative Processes for Building Service-Learning, Andrea Marconi (University of Camerino) and Anita Montagna (Bene Futuro) examine how universities can become spaces for democratic learning, knowledge co-production and collective action.
Their reflections offer valuable insights for the EPiCS project and its ambition to strengthen meaningful public engagement in scientific research.
From "doing for" to "thinking with"
Service-Learning is an educational approach that connects academic learning with meaningful engagement in community challenges.
Rather than treating communities as passive recipients of university initiatives, Service-Learning encourages students, researchers and community stakeholders to collaborate around real needs and shared objectives.
An important distinction emerges between Community Service-Learning and Research Service-Learning.
While community-oriented initiatives may focus primarily on responding to identified needs through practical activities, Research Service-Learning creates opportunities for students, researchers and community members to jointly investigate problems and produce knowledge.
This shift can be described as a transition from "doing for" communities to "thinking with" them.
It changes the relationship between academic expertise and community knowledge. Researchers contribute scientific methods, theoretical frameworks and disciplinary expertise. Citizens and community organisations bring situated knowledge, lived experiences, practical insights and perspectives that may otherwise remain invisible.
Neither form of knowledge is sufficient on its own to fully understand complex societal challenges.
When these perspectives meet, research becomes not simply a process of transferring knowledge from universities to society, but an opportunity for reciprocal learning and shared inquiry.
For Citizen Science, this means recognising that public engagement can extend beyond participation in predefined research tasks to include the co-definition of problems, research priorities and possible solutions.
Universities as spaces for democratic dialogue
The connection between Service-Learning and Citizen Science becomes particularly interesting when considered through the lens of deliberative democracy.
Deliberation is more than discussion or consultation. It involves creating conditions in which people can exchange arguments, listen to different perspectives, critically examine assumptions and reconsider their positions through dialogue.
These processes are especially relevant when addressing complex societal challenges, where scientific evidence, social values, local knowledge and competing interests intersect.
Universities can play an important role in facilitating these encounters.
As Marconi and Montagna argue, universities can be understood as critical spaces: environments where academic knowledge and civic experience meet, where different perspectives can be questioned, and where collective understanding can emerge.
However, opening a discussion is not enough to guarantee meaningful participation.
Who has the opportunity to speak? Whose knowledge is considered legitimate? Who defines the questions being discussed? And how much influence do participants have over the decisions that follow?
These questions are central to both deliberative democracy and inclusive Citizen Science.
Meaningful engagement requires attention to power imbalances, accessibility, representation and the quality of dialogue.
It also requires recognising that participation is not exclusively a rational or technical exercise. People bring their experiences, emotions, expectations and concerns into collective discussions. These dimensions can enrich the understanding of complex problems rather than undermine it.
Participation as a learning process
Participatory research is not only about producing better knowledge. It can also create meaningful learning opportunities for everyone involved.
Through collaboration with researchers and community stakeholders, students and citizens can develop competencies related to critical thinking, communication, cooperation, perspective-taking and democratic participation.
The Reference Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture developed by the Council of Europe provides a useful perspective for understanding these learning processes.
From this viewpoint, participation becomes an opportunity to practise democracy rather than simply learn about it.
Participants learn to navigate disagreement, recognise different forms of expertise, negotiate shared priorities and reflect on the consequences of collective decisions.
For students and early-career researchers, these experiences can also transform how they understand their professional roles.
Scientific expertise is no longer viewed only as the ability to generate reliable knowledge, but also as the capacity to engage responsibly with society, communicate across different perspectives and contribute to the common good.
This has important implications for higher education.
If universities aim to educate professionals capable of responding to contemporary challenges, democratic competencies and scientific competencies should not be treated as entirely separate educational objectives.
What does this mean for Citizen Science?
These reflections are particularly relevant to EPiCS – Engage People in Citizen Science, which promotes stronger connections between higher education institutions, researchers, students and societal stakeholders.
They suggest that the quality of Citizen Science initiatives should be assessed not only through the number of people involved or the scientific outputs produced, but also through the nature of the relationships and opportunities for participation that they create.
Several questions can help guide the design of meaningful engagement processes:
Who defines the problem? Are research priorities established exclusively by academic institutions, or can citizens and stakeholders contribute to identifying relevant challenges?
Whose knowledge counts? Are lived experiences and local expertise recognised alongside scientific knowledge?
How is dialogue facilitated? Are participants given opportunities to understand different perspectives, discuss evidence and collectively explore possible responses?
What happens after participation? Can participants see how their contributions influence research decisions, outcomes or subsequent actions?
What do people learn through the process? Are opportunities for reflection, democratic learning and the development of research-related competencies intentionally supported?
These questions invite researchers to consider participation as a process that requires careful design, facilitation and reflection.
They also highlight the potential of deliberative approaches, including structured dialogue, co-design workshops and deliberative arenas, to create more inclusive and meaningful research experiences.
Digital environments can support these processes by extending opportunities for collaboration, documenting collective discussions and enabling continued interaction beyond individual meetings.
However, technology alone does not make participation democratic. Digital tools need to be embedded within processes that ensure accessibility, transparency, responsiveness and genuine opportunities to influence decisions.
Towards a more engaged and democratic university
The relationship between Service-Learning, deliberative democracy and Citizen Science points towards a broader transformation in the role of universities.
Universities are not only institutions that produce and disseminate knowledge. They can also become spaces where scientific inquiry, education and civic participation reinforce one another.
This requires moving beyond a model in which researchers formulate questions, generate findings and subsequently communicate results to society.
Instead, it means creating opportunities for communities to participate in the construction of knowledge itself.
Such an approach does not diminish the importance of scientific expertise or methodological rigour. Rather, it challenges universities to combine scientific quality with openness, reflexivity and social responsibility.
For EPiCS, this perspective reinforces a central ambition: supporting forms of Citizen Science in which engagement is not an additional activity surrounding research, but a meaningful dimension of how research is conceived and conducted.
Ultimately, the challenge is not simply to bring more people into science.
It is to create the conditions for science and society to think, learn and act together.
Further reading
Marconi, A., & Montagna, A. (2026). Università, studenti e territori: processi partecipativi e deliberativi per la costruzione di Service Learning. In S. Falconi & G. Galeotti (Eds.), Service Learning e Alta Formazione: Dalle competenze per l’occupabilità all’innovazione didattica e formativa. Pensa MultiMedia, pp. 135–150.