Margaret Gold is the Coordinator of the Citizen Science Lab, opens an external URL in a new window at Leiden University, which is a project incubator and knowledge hub that brings together scientists, policy makers, citizens, and other stakeholders in participatory research projects that address scientific questions and urgent societal issues. Margaret also leads Citizen Science within the Open Science and ‘Academia in Motion’ Programme of Leiden University.

Her research focus, opens an external URL in a new window within the ‘Science of Citizen Science’ is on Citizen Observatories for community based environmental monitoring, and the impact they can have on policy, decision making, and behaviour change.

Her decade of experience in Citizen Science includes leading ECSA’s involvement in the WeObserve and LandSense projects, and as a member of the EU-Citizen.Science project, opens an external URL in a new window. Before this she led the Crowdsourcing initiative for the transcription of digitally-imaged specimen labels within the Digital Collections Programme, opens an external URL in a new window at the Natural History Museum in London, and the FP7-Infra funded SYNTHESYS3, opens an external URL in a new window project.

Margaret has an MBA from the Rotterdam School of Management at Erasmus University in the Netherlands, and an Honours BA in International Relations from the University of Windsor in Canada.