ISEED, coordinated by UNIVE, explores forms and strategies to engage citizens in knowledge-based public deliberation by using lessons derived from the field of citizen science. Cases of citizen and community-based science are explored in view of envisaging what conditions promote people’s informed inclusion and participation in creating knowledge-based democratic deliberation.

Our insight is applied to cases of public debate driven by science-based issues, paying particular attention to the variety of 'publics' included and of counter-publics marginalized in these debates. As an interdisciplinary project, ISEED uses a range of empirical methods and academic approaches to understand what makes for inclusive, knowledge-based deliberation in Europe. We combine theoretical analysis, in philosophy and the social sciences, with empirical research, using qualitative approaches such as discourse analysis, interviews and focus groups, but also digital text analysis and tool development.