Citizen science (CS) is recognized as an important locus to produce knowledge at the interface of lay and professional scientists. Participants contribute to projects in ways that hasten and expand data collection at scales beyond normal research projects; in return, they benefit from improved scientific literacy, have a greater voice in conservation decisions, and participate in projects that address community-level concerns. Notwithstanding these benefits, there are growing concerns that in both theory and practice CS lacks reflexivity and gives insufficient attention to the ways in which power mediates peoples’ engagements with science. As part of the positivist scientific tradition, CS is informed by a set of normative assumptions that determine certain truths about the world; the way we know those truths; and the values that shape how we apply our knowledge about the world. In this dissertation, advance scholarly understanding of these dynamics by bringing together theory from political ecology, ontology, and cultural geography to ask how relational frameworks shape peoples’ engagements with CS.

I conducted this research by using a combination of ethnographic interviews; content analysis; and participant observation among citizen scientists pursuing conservation agendas related to Laysan albatross over a span of eighteen months in the Hawaiian Islands. Throughout two articles and a digital Storymap chapter, I trace how various discourses and material practices shaped citizen scientists’ relationships to albatross and the ways in which CS programs brought together heterogeneous stakeholder groups. My results show that citizen scientists saw their work as bound within acts of care, reciprocity, and sociality that extended to albatross, the environment, and others in the community. This had the result of engaging a diverse group of stakeholders who mutually-supported one another and collaboratively managed the only colonies of Laysan albatross in the world that live among people. Given the growing interest in decolonizing research, this work offers lessons for more engaged and equitable ways of practicing CS and underscores that when done well, CS is fundamentally relational.