Dr Sarah West

University of York

Sarah West is an interdisciplinary researcher and practitioner working to bring diverse voices into research through participatory approaches, including citizen science.

Sarah is currently Director of SEI York, a Centre of the Stockholm Environment Institute, a science-to-policy research institute, whose York Centre is at the University of York in the Department of Environment and Geography.

She has used citizen science approaches to address topics as diverse as air pollution, biodiversity, parenting, and exploring community responses to Covid-19. Her projects mainly take place in the UK and Kenya.

Sarah has spent over a decade designing, running and evaluating citizen science projects, and together with other SEI colleagues has written reports for Defra, UK Earth Observation Framework and journal articles exploring who participates in citizen science, their motivations for participation, and how volunteers can be recruited and retained. She is particularly interested in exploring how different messaging and communication affects participation in citizen science projects.