Stephen Parkinson
Researcher
Biography
Stephen Parkinson (Parky) is a Researcher at Earthwatch and PhD student in the Horizon Centre for Doctoral Training at the University of Nottingham.
Stephen joined Earthwatch in 2018, having obtained a BA degree in Geography from the University of Cambridge. He works across several Horizon Europe research projects, looking at the “science of citizen science” and trying to improve the way projects involve local communities and members of the public. In October 2023, Stephen joined the Horizon Centre for Doctoral Training as a PhD student at the University of Nottingham. His PhD research is currently based around the CircleUp project and explores how households can be more meaningfully involved as actors in the circular economy. Previously, Stephen worked in the freshwater team at Earthwatch, supporting research on the FreshWater Watch project.
Research interests
- Citizen science
- Impact assessment
- Circular economy
- Freshwater monitoring
- Geography
Projects
CircleUp (Horizon Europe)
Stephen coordinates Earthwatch’s efforts in CircleUp, leading a work package on communication, dissemination and networking, and working closely with Oxfordshire County Council to empower households as actors in the circular economy.
more4nature (Horizon Europe)
Stephen supports activities in the 20 more4nature pioneer cases including two FreshWater Watch cases, one in Sierra Leone and one in Italy.
ProBleu (Horizon Europe)
Stephen is part of the team developing the ProBleu funding calls and teaching resources. The aim is to grow the Network of European Blue Schools and bring ocean and water literacy into the classroom across the EU and associated countries.
Iliad (Horizon 2020)
Stephen was a researcher for the Iliad project, exploring how citizen science can contribute to the development of digital twins of the ocean.
MICS (Horizon 2020)
Stephen was a researcher for the MICS project. He worked on impact assessment methods, user-requirements for the MICS platform, and supported the co-design and co-evaluation processes within the five MICS case study projects.
In his previous role, Stephen helped to coordinate the FreshWater Watch project, organising WaterBlitzes and supporting citizen scientists with their data collection and study design.
GroundTruth2.0 (Horizon 2020)
Stephen was a researcher for the Ground Truth 2.0 project and supported the citizen observatory VattenFokus with their ongoing water quality monitoring.
Selected publications
Parkinson, S., Woods, S. M., Sprinks, J., Cruz, B., Das, K., Witter, A., Lessin, G., Edelist, D., Angel, D., & Ceccaroni, L. (2025). Citizen Science and Ocean Literacy: Bridging the Gap Between Society and the Ocean. In C. Certomà (Ed.), Blue Kinships: An Exploration of Society & the Ocean (pp. 101–122). Springer Nature Switzerland. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-78619-8_7
Bishop, I., Boldrini, A., Clymans, W., Hall, C., Moorhouse, H., Parkinson, S., Scott-Somme, K., Thornhill, I., & Loiselle, S. (2025). FreshWater Watch: Investigating the Health of Freshwater Ecosystems, from the Bottom Up. Citizen Science: Theory and Practice, 10(1). https://doi.org/10.5334/cstp.754
Wehn, U., Bilbao Erezkano, A., Somerwill, L., Linders, T., Maso, J., Parkinson, S., Semasingha, C., & Woods, S. (2025). Past and present marine citizen science around the globe: A cumulative inventory of initiatives and data produced. Ambio. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-024-02119-z
Parkinson, S., Woods, S. M., Sprinks, J., & Ceccaroni, L. (2022). A Practical Approach to Assessing the Impact of Citizen Science towards the Sustainable Development Goals. Sustainability, 14(8), Article 8. https://doi.org/10.3390/su14084676
Wehn, U., Gharesifard, M., Ceccaroni, L., Joyce, H., Ajates, R., Woods, S., Bilbao, A., Parkinson, S., Gold, M., & Wheatland, J. (2021). Impact assessment of citizen science: State of the art and guiding principles for a consolidated approach. Sustainability Science, 16(5), 1683–1699. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-021-00959-2
Young, J. C., Rose, D. C., Mumby, H. S., Benitez-Capistros, F., Derrick, C. J., Finch, T., Garcia, C., Home, C., Marwaha, E., Morgans, C., Parkinson, S., Shah, J., Wilson, K. A., & Mukherjee, N. (2018). A methodological guide to using and reporting on interviews in conservation science research. Methods in Ecology and Evolution, 9(1), 10–19. https://doi.org/10.1111/2041-210X.12828