Plenary Sessions

Unlike the parallel workshops, which require participants to choose a session, the plenary sessions will involve everyone and provide a shared learning experience.

Monday, 8 June

Prof. Nivedita Prasad, is Professor of Action Methods and Gender-Specific Social Work at Alice Salomon University in Berlin, where she heads the MA programme in Social Work as a Human Rights Profession, among other roles. Her research methodology is strongly oriented towards (feminist) participatory action research – a research method that tends to be neglected in Western Europe.

Monday, 8 June

At the Project Marketplace, various local Citizen Science Projects will showcase their work and invite participants to engage in discussions around their project posters. It is about getting to know the challenges, failures, and open questions behind the projects — and learning from what didn’t work as much as from what did.

Wednesday, 10 June

PD Dr Bianca Vienni-Baptista is an interdisciplinary social anthropologist with a PhD in Cultural Studies. She is Group Leader of Cultural Studies of Science and Technology Group and lecturer at the Transdisciplinarity Lab, ETH Zurich. Her expertise lies at the interface of the anthropology of science and technology and inter- and transdisciplinary research, in both international and intercultural contexts. Bianca’s research examines inter- and transdisciplinary research practices, the influence of funding and evaluation systems, and science–policy interactions essential for societal transformations, applying a cultural lens. Bianca also co-designs transformative inter- and transdisciplinary processes for sustainable development. Her work rethinks engaged and inclusive co-production settings and explores the role of arts, humanities, and social sciences (AHSS) in transformative research. 

Wednesday, 10 June

A Bar Camp is a participant-driven, informal conference where you lead discussions, workshops, and presentations. Instead of a fixed program set by organizers, participants shape the agenda, sharing knowledge and ideas on topics that matter to them. This will be your chance to explore and discuss whatever interests or challenges you. You might initiate a discussion on a pressing question, host a skill-sharing session, or organize a roundtable with peers from your field. The technical details will be explained during the school, but for now, start thinking about what you’d like to bring to the Bar Camp.

Thursday, 11 June

Exploring Citizen Science for Collaborative Exhibition Curation & Archiving 

As part of the Summer School, participants will visit the Ethnographic Museum to engage with Rumble in the Archive, a participatory and community-driven space that critically examines Zurich’s colonial entanglements and postcolonial present. Rather than functioning as a conventional exhibition, Rumble in the Archive is a collective space for archiving, learning, and encounter, created by artists, researchers, civil society actors, and the museum team. 

In addition, the visit will include an exchange on the museum’s ongoing renaming process. Participants will discuss how participatory citizen science approaches are being embedded in this institutional transformation, and explore different modalities of public involvement in reshaping archives, narratives, and the museum’s identity.