Tania Jenkins

I am a science communicator and citizen science designer based in Switzerland and founder of Cosie, which stands for co-creating science, impacting engagement. I empower and support researchers to design for greater societal impact throughout the research cycle: from the start of a research project to its implementation and impact assessment. I can therefore consult or partner on projects that want to achieve societal impact.

I am currently coordinating SchoolFan, an Erasmus+ citizen science project to empower students in 4 European countries to identify fake news related to climate change.

From 2021-2024, I designed and coordinated CoFish, a co-created citizen science project funded by the SNF COST programme, In this project, we co-designed and evaluated the societal outcomes of research with professional and amateur fishers on Lake Geneva, the results of which have been summarised as a research paper. The main the societal outcomes were empowerment of fishers and self efficacy to participate in scientific processes and communicate project outcomes through their channels. Since then, they have continued to collaborate with scientists and partner in citizen science initiatives.

I am co-founder of EvoKE project, Evolutionary Knowledge for Everyone (evokeproject.org),to promote the public understanding of evolution in Europe. As part of the EvoKE Association, we were invited to counsel on science communication at the European Commission to Commissioner of Health and Food Safety at DG SANTE. Our advisory input, resulted  in two policy documents  and participation in a vaccination summit organization. Between 2018 and 2023 I chaired the EU-funded COST Action EuroScitizen maintaining the network which included over 200 members from 31 countries where we collaboratively co-produced scientific knowledge essential to understand and overcome the low evolution literacy in Europe.

Prior to these projects I held diverse roles in research, public outreach (e.g. museum) and policy (Swiss Academy of Sciences). I therefore bring with me experience of diverse formats and methods.