Postdigital Citizen Research: Surviving – Resisting – Flourishing (Special Issue Editorial)

It is now more than 30 years since Bill Readings (1997: 171) wrote presciently in The University in Ruins that ‘[c]hange comes neither from within nor from without, but from the difficult space – neither inside nor outside – where one is’. Most would agree that the position of universities in most societies and researchers in most universities has only become more problematic in the intervening period. This Special Issue focuses on a form of research which has become more prevalent during this time, perhaps because it inhabits precisely the kind of hybrid space Readings (1997) identified: citizen science, social science, and humanities. Exploring these overlapping areas both individually and through the collective term citizen research, the papers in the Special Issue examine its practices and positions in relation to research led by universities or other research hubs. They do this via postdigital perspectives which are ideally placed to understand and extend the hybridity and methodological possibilities of citizen research and identify commonalties with postdigital research approaches more generally (Jandrić et al. 2023b, 2023c).