The VINCULUM project received an Honourable Mention in the European Union Prize for Citizen Science 2025, with the application Mindful journeys to a shared past: crafting History, engaging fellow citizens, co-creating informed and reflexive minds, presented by Maria de Lurdes Rosa.

VINCULUM’s application consisted of two sets of initiatives: the ‘Educational program for secondary school students’ and the ‘Local History and heritage program’. The former was based on the educational value of discovering local heritage, while the latter comprised four different activities involving local historians, cultural associations, municipal culture departments and society. Examples include the ‘Vínculos com (a) História’ [Entails with (a) History] programme, the ‘Entail of the month’ project or the ‘Vínculos com (a) História: à descoberta das casas históricas da Ribeira Lima’ initiative (which brought together around 1,500 visitors to manor houses in the Lima Valley over four days).

Maria de Lourdes Rosa highlighted three key achievements: ‘demonstrating the value of developing Citizen Science projects in History, particularly non-contemporary History, proving the relevance of studying distant pasts’; ‘proving to the academic community that citizen science activities can be successfully implemented within pure research projects’; and ‘transforming participants’ perspectives on local history and genealogy, shifting from narrow or mythical interpretations to a broader, more complex understanding of the past, while also validating the importance of investing European research funds in such initiatives’.

The jury of the prize ‘was impressed with the range of partners, and the ways in which the project focused on rural or marginalised students, who were taught to be history guides’, also appreciating ‘the range of outputs from the work, spanning tours of houses to a book and podcasts’. Josep Perelló, a member of the jury, highlighted the maturity of citizen science, revealed in the quality and diversity of the projects in the competition, which represented many topics and disciplines, including the social sciences and the humanities, ‘which makes citizen science stronger’.

The European Union Prize for Citizen Science ‘honours, presents, and supports outstanding projects whose social and political impact advances the further development of a pluralistic, inclusive, and sustainable society in Europe’. The winning projects were announced on 19 June at the Cluster event: Advancing Public Engagement and Citizen Science in the ERA, at the European Commission (Brussels). The awards ceremony will take place in Linz on 4 September, as part of the Ars Electronica Festival. Ars Electronica awards the European Union Prize for Citizen Science on behalf of the European Commission in the context of the IMPETUS project. The winner of the Grand Prize was the project HEROINES: Heritage of Emancipation — Empowering Roma Women through Building Networks of Solidarity (Serbia).

At the beginning of the year, VINCULUM had already received the YERUN Open Science Award 2024 with its application ‘You can be a Historian’.