Citizen Science in the Humanities as a Novel Method for Engagement of Citizens with eInfrastructures

Citizen science explores the engagement of unprofessional researchers in studies coordinated by academics. Nowadays a topic of particular interest is how new technologies are contributing to such citizen engagement.
For example the creation of a dictionary of Mediaeval Latin which took 101 years to complete. The effort produced seventeen volumes of work, the first of which was published in 1975 – with work on them launched as early as in 1913, and the last one published in 2013. This project was only made possible with the help of crowdsourcing and the help of dedicated volunteers.
The advancement of ICT, Internet and mobile technologies give new opportunities for bringing together groups of people to contribute to research. This resulted in a rapid growth of the citizen science initiatives around the globe, and subsequently in an increased body of academic publications discussing various aspects of it.
This research visit will focus on the requirements which eInfrastructures need to fulfil for such citizen science engagement, especially addressing issues of scale and citizen science projects which grow as big data ones.
The visit will include discussions with relevant specialists from Cyprus and participation in sessions in the EuroMed and KICSS conferences.