People-Environment-Public Health: How Transdisciplinarity Can be a Bridge in Participatory Research

Based on the proposals of Citizen Science (Cooper and Lewenstein, 2016; Hecker et al., 2018) and Post-normal Science (Funtowicz and Ravetz, 1993, 2020), the OHCS project is implemented in seven case studies in Italy. The project is an ongoing research endeavour that aims to develop an intervention model for the National System for Health Prevention and Environmental Protection, capable of characterising the environmental quality, assessing the exposure of the population and measuring the impacts of the contamination and remediation scenarios. One of the case studies concerns Porto Marghera - Venice (Italy), one of the most contaminated areas in central and western Europe, and involves human biomonitoring, with the participation of individuals at all stages of the research process, extending beyond the role of test subjects.

The joint work of the social sciences and epidemiology represents one of the first and main lines of enquiry that implements participatory approaches (Kullenberg and Kasperowski, 2016), recognising the richness of the interplay of different knowledge and the need to broaden the gaze to the stakes and uncertainties that environment and people-related issues pose (Malavasi et al., 2023).

Both CS and PNS prioritise the inclusion of various stakeholders in the research process and challenge traditional notions of “expert knowledge”, promoting a more democratic and transparent approach to knowledge production (Ravetz, 2006; Haklay et al., 2023). This work shows, from a methodological point of view, a way of implementing transdisciplinarity and supporting knowledge exchange across scientific and non-scientific stakeholder communities: citizens, local administrations and “experts”. Using a concrete case, it would be step-by-step guide to a continuous understanding, reflection and advancing work, in the awareness that each case study needs to be contextualised in space and time and that doing participatory research is not just a matter of ticking boxes.