Sasha Woods

Director of Science & Policy

Biography

Sasha Woods is Director of Science and Policy at Earthwatch.

Sasha has a broad background in scientific research; she obtained a BSc in Natural Sciences from the University of Birmingham, a MSc in Reproductive and Developmental Biology from Imperial College London, and a PhD in Medicine from the University of Bristol. She went on to undertake postdoctoral research in Parkinson’s Disease at Harvard Medical School (2015-2016), and in retinal development/disease at University College London (2016-2019). She has also held a position as Teaching Fellow for the Psychology and Neuroscience of Mental Health course and Applied Neuroscience program at King’s College London since 2016.

Despite a background focused on human biology, Sasha moved into socio-environmental science in response to the climate and biodiversity challenges. Sasha now leads the Science and Policy team at Earthwatch, ensuring our work is scientifically rigorous and focussed on the problem.

Research interests

Citizen science
Education
Policy
Socio-environmental justice

Activities

Sasha sits on the Mentor Panel for the IMPETUS project; which supports citizen science by enabling a wider range of citizen science initiatives to access innovative funding.

Projects

ProBleu (Horizon Europe)

Sasha is part of the team developing the ProBleu pipeline to expand the Network of European Blue Schools

more4nature (Horizon Europe)

Sasha coordinates Earthwatch’s efforts in more4nature, leading a work package supporting the 20 pioneer cases including two FreshWater Watch cases, one in Sierra Leone and one in Italy.

MICS (Horizon 2020)

Sasha was part of the coordinating team, developing impact indicators and leading dissemination and outreach activities.

MONOCLE (Horizon 2020)

Sasha was responsible for a work package relating to product exploitation and project dissemination.

COS4CLOUD (Horizon 2020)

Sasha led a work package relating to exploitation and dissemination.

Publications

A Practical Approach to Assessing the Impact of Citizen Science towards the Sustainable Development Goals. In Sustainability, 14(8), 4676.

Parkinson, S., Woods, S. M., Sprinks, J., & Ceccaroni, L. (2022).

How Networks of Citizen Observatories Can Increase the Quality and Quantity of Citizen-Science-Generated Data Used to Monitor SDG Indicators.  In Sustainability, 14(7), 4078.

Woods, S. M., Daskolia, M., Joly, A., Bonnet, P., Soacha, K., Liñan, S., … & Ceccaroni, L. (2022).

Impact assessment of citizen science: state of the art and guiding principles for a consolidated approach. In Sustainability Science, 16(5), 1683-1699.

Wehn, U., Gharesifard, M., Ceccaroni, L., Joyce, H., Ajates, R., Woods, S., … & Wheatland, J. (2021).

Coordinator perceptions when assessing the impact of citizen science towards sustainable development goals. In Sustainability, 13(4), 2377.

Sprinks, J., Woods, S. M., Parkinson, S., Wehn, U., Joyce, H., Ceccaroni, L., & Gharesifard, M. (2021).

Impact assessment of citizen science: state of the art and guiding principles for a consolidated approach. In Sustainability Science, 1-17.