On Friday 26 April, ECSA held its 2024 AGM. This year’s meeting included the election of the ECSA board, with new candidates and some board members running for re-election. After the voting, we are proud to welcome the new ECSA board!
The AGM included an overview of ECSA’s achievements in 2023, the activities of working groups (including a vote on their continuation and the inauguration of new working groups), and the presentation of finances. We also heard more about the 2026 ECSA conference in Oulu, Finland – something to look forward to!
We would like to give a huge thank you to the outgoing members of the board for their invaluable contributions to ECSA and the citizen science community over the past few years.
See more about the board below and on our organisation page.
Executive board
Chair: Dr. Susanne Hecker
Susanne is the leader of mit:forschen! citizen science organisation and head of the Society and Nature programme at the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin. She has been actively involved in building the citizen science community in Europe, is one of the founding members of ECSA, and lead the organisation of the first ECSA conference in 2016.
Vice Chair: Muki Haklay
Muki is Professor of Geographical and Information Science at UCL, and has a role at Université Paris Cité setting up a citizen science academy. He has been involved in ECSA from the beginning, and lead the Doing It Together (DITOs) citizen science project.
Board of directors:
Treasurer: Dr. Susanne Tönsmann
Susanne works as a grant advisor at the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland, with previous roles as managing director of the Participatory Science Academy at the University of Zurich and ETC Zurich. Susanne has past experience as treasurer of the Alumni Association of the Heinrich-Böll-Foundation, and has been part of the scientific committee for the 2022 and 2024 ECSA conferences.
Rosa Arias
Rosa is the founder of Science for Change. She has a background in chemical engineering and expert knowledge in odour pollution, which she utilised to create the OdourCollect project, as well as leading on the D-NOSES project.
Eglė Butkevičienė
Eglė is a member of the European University Associations, where she leads a subgroup on citizen and participatory science, and is a founding member of the Citizen Science Association in Lithuania. Eglė has participated in a range of Horizon Europe citizen science projects.
Dr. Barbara Kieslinger
Barbara is a senior scientist at the Centre for Social Innovation in Vienna, and has been engaged in and studying citizen science for many years, working on the SOCIENTIZE project and contributing to the first whitepaper on citizen science in Europe.
Dr. Gitte Kragh
Gitte has been involved in ECSA for many years, as well as working on national and European citizen science projects, being part of the Danish Citizen Science Network, a citizen science ambassador for the EU Citizen Science project, and more. She is a researcher at Aarhus University and an ecologist.
Roger Norum
Roger is associate professor of cultural anthropology at the University of Oulu in Finland. He is the co-founder of the Finnish Association of Citizen Sciences, and co-chair of the upcoming ECSA 2026 conference. Roger has been involved in many citizen science initiatives and directed funding on biodiversity loss initiatives.
Gaston Remmers
Gaston has been involved with ECSA since 2018, and has experience in citizen science in multiple domains, including agroecology, rural development, and health. He coordinates the Self Research Network Netherlands and co-founded the ECSA Working Group Citizen Science for Health, which produced the first conference on Citizen Science for Health in 2023. He is the director of the patient-driven Mijn Data Onze Gezondheid (My Data Our Health).
