Talking borders. From Local Expertise to Global Exchange

The Top Citizen Science experiment Talking borders. From Local Expertise to Global Exchange unravels the potentials and limits of bringing in non-scientific expertise in the generation of knowledge. It aims to understand how differences of expertise are socially and culturally constructed. The experiment turns the Association for Borderland Studies 2nd World Conference, which will take place in Vienna and Budapest in July 2018 on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the dissolution of the Habsburg Empire, into a site of scientific investigation itself. The project asks: (1) what do borders mean to border scholars (trained experts)? (2) What do borders mean to young adults from the (ex-) Habsburg area (non-trained experts)? (3) What do borders mean to citizens from the (ex-) Habsburg area regardless of their age or training? And: (4) what new knowledge does a global trans-border encounter between non-trained and trained border experts reveal? The experiment consists of three aspects: (a) It will gather 100 face-to-face dialogues about the meaning of borders. 100 non-trained experts (first year students in the humanities recruited from universities in border regions throughout the ex-Habsburg area) dialogue with 100 trained experts (border scholars working on non-European topics recruited among the conference participants) as equals. (b) The 100 dialogues are made publicly available on the project website. A press release throughout the ex-Habsburg area will invite citizens to visit the website, to create their own dialogues about the meaning of borders, and to upload these on the project website. (c) The project will also host a global digital café for 100 working days on a Facebook page, where parts of the 100 dialogues are posted and commented on by a gradually widening group of experts. The Facebook page will report how scientific knowledge on the global meaning(s) of borders is generated in a cumulative collective learning experience. The unique TCS experiment uses the platform of a World Conference in order to lift the borders of expertise, age and method in science. The TCS project opens up a scientific conference in order to bring in the expertise of non-trained experts, i.e. first-year students, to the very arena where science is presented and exchanged. Engaging border scholars in a citizen science project on the humanities aims to bring us closer to acknowledging and understanding the limits of the production and consumption of science.

No additional funding sources recorded.