PINT OF SCIENCE FESTIVAL
19-21 MAY 2025
.png)
Scientists are stereotypically individual creatures, focused on their research. But there is power in numbers. People, living together in a more or less ordered community can achieve much more. So tonight, we explore how we as a society can contribute with these talks about citizen science.
Empowering Citizens to Advance Science: Exploring the Many Faces of Citizen Science and its Positive Impact on Society
Annelies Duerinckx
Coordinator
Scivil
Citizen science is a powerful tool for creating positive change in our society. It takes on many forms, with examples ranging from air quality and biodiversity monitoring to cultural heritage preservation and disease-fighting games. Through citizen-led initiatives, we can better understand pollution's impact on our health, improve mobility in our cities, and fight climate change. This session will delve into the various faces of citizen science and its impact on society, inspiring you to contribute to science and create positive change in your community.
Measuring biodiversity with citizen scientists in peri-urban landscapes
Frederik Gerits
Researcher
ILVO
The composition of landscapes influences the activity of arthropods, the microclimate and the performance of crop species. Frederik Gerits (ILVO, Social Sciences Unit) will explain how he studied this with the help of over 100 volunteering citizen scientists. He used 1m² vegetable gardens as phytometers to study ecosystem services while making biodiversity and ecosystem services tangible for the volunteers. For 3 years he traveled on a cargo bike trough peri-urban landscapes searching for aphids, carabid beetles and bees while diving deep into 1m²-gardens with the citizen scientists.
What's the history of climate change mitigation?
Valeria Zambianchi
Phd researcher
KU Leuven
Mitigating the climate crisis requires socio-ecological transformations, intertwining the exit from a fossil fueled society and the uptake of a climate just one. The United Kingdom introduced what is considered its first environmental law in 1956 and, since then, a multitude of laws addressing the mitigation of the climate crisis have been adopted. Is the true that “the more, the merrier”? What if we expand our understanding of what is a climate law to include also acts affecting the climate crisis mitigation, without having an explicit climate-label? This study investigates the temporal evolution of climate change mitigation beyond the expli
