Study title

The collection includes the audio recording of Mokila story by Bruno Ewundi, a Baka elder in south-eastern Cameroon. The story describes the belief by the indigenous Baka people that hunters called Tuma can shape-shift into other animals, specifically in this account, elephants. The elder outlines an instance of this. Oral consent was gained to share this story in a non-anonymous fashion. The broader study was a 5-year project incorporating both ethnographic work and applied socio-technical work. The objective was to develop appropriate mobile technology which can enable any community, anywhere, to collect and analyse data on a range of socio-ecological issues on their own terms. The motivation for this work is the urgent need for more data on social and environmental aspects in every context around the world in order to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals and other aspirations of social and ecological wellbeing. Specifically, the project collaborated with remote indigenous communities in Africa and South America who expressed great interest in documenting and sharing their extensive knowledge using the Sapelli digital tool developed by the team. Through this work, the project worked towards addressing issues of hegemonic research practices, epistemological hierarchies, indigenous rights, and equitable conservation.The challenge of Extreme Citizen Science is to enable any community, regardless of literacy or education, to initiate, run, and use the result of a local citizen science activity, so they can be empowered to address and solve issues that concern them. Citizen Science is understood here as the participation of members of the public in a scientific project, from shaping the question, to collecting the data, analysing it and using the knowledge that emerges from it. Over the past 3 years, under the leadership of Prof. Muki Haklay, the Extreme Citizen Science programme at UCL has demonstrated that non-literate people and those with limited technical...