The new Village project supports children and young people with mentally ill parents by strengthening their formal and informal support systems. The aim is to evaluate the Village approach and integrate it sustainably into existing structures. You can find out exactly how this works and how you can participate in the research on the project preview page on Österreich forscht.

For the first time ever, there will also be plenty of citizen science at Buch Wien, Austria's biggest book fair, from 20-24 November. Österreich forscht and several projects can be explored and tried out in the Science Lounge. You can find all the details in the corresponding blog post. Drop by and join in the research!

A couple of Instagram stories here a TikTok video there: The pervasiveness of our everyday lives with more and more media content consumed in a short period of time has completely changed the way we access and deal with information: Due to their everyday use of and the strong fusion of their lives with social media, it is young people who are most affected by this development. The project “Young Citizen Scientists against Disinformation” aims to explore the topic of disinformation from the perspective of those young adults, by involving them into the research project by a Citizen Science approach. If you want to know more about the project, check out the project website and join the project!

SoilRise is a new research project on earthworm biodiversity in Europe. Earthworms play a crucial role in soil fertility and are considered important ecosystem engineers. With the help of citizen scientists the project team would like to collect data on the distribution and diversity of earthworms in Europe. If you want to know more, check out the project description on Österreich forscht and join the project.

The new TRA:WELL project focuses on the relationship between active mobility (walking, cycling, scooters) and the well-being of young people. The entire physical activity behaviour is considered in order to assess the contribution of active forms of mobility to the fulfilment of physical activity recommendations. If you want to know more, have a look at the project description on Österreich forscht and join this new project.

DANUBE4all is a new citizen science project funded by the EU, with the main task of developing a comprehensive action plan for the renaturation of river stretches in the Danube River Basin (DRB). Have a look and join the project!

The proceedings of this year's ECSA/ACSC 2024 double conference have just been published! In the Österreich forscht blog you will find all contributions briefly summarized and individually linked. Have a look right away!

The Association of Austrian Adult Education Centres (Verband Österreichischer Volkshochschulen – VÖV), founded in 1950, is a non-partisan educational organisation with a long tradition based on a federal structure. It can look back on a specific tradition of adult and general education in Austria that dates back to well into the 19th century. Today, the adult education centres are the largest adult education institution in the country with 700,000 participants per year. All of the programmes on offer claim to be science-based. 

The adult education centres

• work on a non-profit and low-threshold basis. They thus offer all people in Austria the opportunity to participate in education.
• are a leading educational institution, for example in the areas of health education, languages, creativity, democratic education and science education, digital skills, basic education and school-leaving qualifications.
• provide a wide range of services for the region and society at over 800 locations, with 1,200 full-time employees, 13,000 course instructors and numerous volunteers, and are important local and regional meeting places.
• are able to react quickly to current requirements in times of crisis.
• offer excellent framework and working conditions for the concrete implementation of education in accordance with recognised quality criteria for all those involved.
• have been active in democracy and science education for over a hundred years and work for social cohesion and sustainable development.

Adult education centres advocate recognising the democratic potential of citizen science at the level of education policy and supporting it accordingly. Citizen science can also be seen as an effective instrument for strengthening trust in science (and thus democracy) through the broadest and most intensive participation possible

At the regional or institutional level, adult education centres are available for corresponding projects and collaborations or are already actively involved in them.

Furthermore, it is not least a matter of at least anchoring approaches and methods of citizen science in various adult education centre course segments or formats.

We have updated one of our most important sections on Österreich forscht. Under What is Citizen Science, we have summarised the most important information for anyone who wants to find out more about citizen science in general. In addition to updated project examples, there is now also an expanded text on the history of citizen science. Take a look now!

We have revised our Worldwide section on Österreich forscht and added exciting new information! Now there's even more to discover. Dive in and take a look!