Citizen Sense

How do sensors influence relations and responsibilities toward environments?

Practices of monitoring and sensing environments have migrated to everyday participatory applications, where users of smart phones and networked devices are able to engage with modes of environmental observation and data collection. Yet how effective are these practices of citizen sensing in not just providing “crowd-sourced” data sets, but also in giving rise to new modes of environmental awareness and practice?

Through intensive fieldwork, study and use of sensing applications, the Citizen Sense project sets out to contextualize, question and expand upon the understandings and possibilities of democratized environmental action through citizen sensing practices. Citizen Sense develops a considerable body of new primary research, while seeking to raise distinct questions about the politics and practices of sense that emerge at the intersection of sensor technologies, citizen participation and environmental change.

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The Citizen Sense project is led by Professor Jennifer Gabrys and is part of the Planetary Praxis research group based in the Department of Sociology at the University of Cambridge.