Dear Mitja,

Thank you very much for your detailed email and for sharing the great overview of the Slovenian Citizen Science Network and its activities.

At UEFISCDI, we are currently exploring opportunities to join existing project consortia as partners under the current Horizon Europe calls, particularly in topics related to citizen engagement and citizen science. We are not leading any proposals at the moment.

I look forward to staying in touch.

Kind regards,
Ioana

Dear Ioana,

Thank you very much for your message and for reaching out.

We operate within the Central Technical Library of the University of Ljubljana (CTK), where we coordinate and support the Slovenian Citizen Science Network. The network brings together a broad range of stakeholders, including research institutes, universities, libraries, NGOs, public bodies and individual practitioners. Currently, it includes a large and active membership across Slovenia and serves as a national hub for citizen science coordination, exchange and capacity building.

Our activities include:

• organizing national Citizen Science Days and thematic events,
• delivering workshops, trainings and lectures for researchers, librarians and other stakeholders,
• maintaining a national citizen science portal citizenscience.si and catalogue of projects,
• supporting networking between research organizations, civil society and public authorities,
• and contributing to discussions on finance, policy and governance.

We are very interested in collaboration in a broad sense, including project-based cooperation under Horizon Europe, but also policy-oriented work, mutual learning, co-creation of guidelines, or participation in initiatives focused on citizen engagement, democratic R&I and science–society relations. If you see areas where our network, expertise or infrastructure could add value to your ongoing or planned activities, we would be very happy to explore this further.

At the moment, we are not leading a specific Horizon Europe proposal under the mentioned WIDERA call, but we are actively open to joining consortia or contributing to proposal development where our experience in citizen science practice, community building and national-level coordination could be relevant. We would therefore welcome your suggestions on potential collaboration formats or concrete roles you believe we could contribute to.

Please feel free to let us know how you envision possible cooperation, and we would be glad to continue the discussion.

Kind regards,

Od: Ioana Trif <ioana.trif@uefiscdi.ro>
Poslano: Torek, Januar 27, 2026 13:32
Za: Tit Neubauer <Tit.Neubauer@gov.si>
Kp: Vovk Iskrić, Mitja <Mitja.Vovk-Iskric@ctk.uni-lj.si>; Alina Irimia <alina.irimia@uefiscdi.ro>; Alexandra Roman <alexandra.roman@uefiscdi.ro>; Andreea Popa <andreea.popa@uefiscdi.ro>; Petra Žagar <Petra.Zagar@gov.si>
Zadeva: RE: Exploring collaboration opportunities in citizen science

Dear Tit,

Thank you very much for your reply and for the useful information. It’s great to hear about the establishment of the Slovenian Citizen Science network following the MLE, and thank you for sharing the link.

Thank you also for introducing Mr. Mitja Vovk Iskrič, much appreciated.

I hope we will stay in touch.

Kind regards from Bucharest,
Ioana

Dear Ioana,

Thank you for your email and I hope you also had a nice start to the year.

As you may know, following the MLE our national CS network was set-up and you can see the list of partners and their projects at the official web page https://citizenscience.si/en/ . This might be a good starting point to explore possible collaborations with Slovenian partners.

I am also adding Mr. Mitja Vovk Iskrič from the Central Technical Library at the University of Ljubljana, who helps coordinate the CS network, to copy as he might be better placed to have direct information on whether some of our organisations are looking to apply to the WIDERA call. Mitja would also be able to forward your request for partners through our national network.

I hope this helps at this point.

Hope to keep in touch.

Kind regards,

Tit

Tit Neubauer

Sektor za znanost

Science division

T: + 386 1 478 46 92

M: + 386 (0)31 865 947
E: tit.neubauer@gov.si 

Dear Petra,

Dear Tit,

I hope you are doing well and that 2026 has started off nicely for you.

We met few years ago during the Mutual Learning Exercise on Citizen Science Initiatives - Policy and Practice, where I participated as a representative of UEFISCDI from Romania.

I am writing to you as our institution is very interested in continuing and strengthening its involvement in citizen science and citizen engagement activities at European level. UEFISCDI has participated in several projects in this area (such as ProEthics, M100 and MARIE), and we are currently exploring opportunities to join project consortia as partners under Horizon Europe calls.

In this context, I was wondering whether you have any project applications currently under development within Horizon Europe calls, such as Pillar III: Fostering citizen engagement for more responsible and democratic R&I (HORIZON-WIDERA-2026-06-ERA-05), or other relevant calls.

I wish you a lovely week and I really hope we will meet again,

Best regards,
Ioana Trif

Policy Expert

UEFISCDI

Romania