Home to meadows, playing fields, ornamental gardens, orchards, and even a lake, Worcester College – Oxford is set amidst some of the city’s most remarkable green spaces. The dedication of the college staff maintains this wonderful place, which in turn supports wildlife and enhances the well-being of students, staff, and visitors.
We have partnered with the Worcester College sustainability team, working with students, educators, gardeners, and researchers to better understand how nature and humans can flourish together.
On April 27th, the City Nature Challenge (CNC) was held in the Worcester College garden. This global event encourages cities worldwide to showcase their biodiversity, with awards for the most species identified, the highest number of observers, and the greatest number of observations.
Here, for the first time, we combined measures of natural health through biodiversity using an app called iNaturalist with human nature relatedness and well-being as part of the integrated CNC ECOFLORET module:
This is one of many examples of a research co-production pilot where we blend citizen science methods with established research study techniques.
Photo credit: Nathan Stazicker and K. Wilhelm
This collaborative effort advances the E-Co-Flourishing research in investigating the mutual benefits of people and nature supporting each other. Worcester College is one of the pioneering Living Lab pilot sites engaging in this innovative co-production, setting a valuable precedent for developing community-based E-Co-Flourishing interventions.
CNC Key Researchers: Dr Katrin Wilhelm, Joseph Boyle
Listen to Joseph Boyle’s – Worcester College’s Sustainability Research
Assistant – podcast about sustainability research at Worcester College Joseph Boyle, its biodiversity
survey and how clean the water in the lake is.
