Observing through Participants. Analytical and practical Potential of Citizens’ Involvement in Event Research. Barbara Grabher University of Hull, School of Education and Social Sciences Cottingham Road, Hull HU6 7RX, United Kingdom b.grabher@hull.ac.uk This is a post-peer review pre-print draft, to appear as: Barbara Grabher (2018) Observing Through Participants. Analytical and practical Potential of Citizens’ Involvement in Event Research, Studies on Home and Community Sciences, 11:2, 66-76, DOI: 10.1080/09737189.2017.1420389 For the final version, please get in touch with the author at b.grabher@hull.ac.uk. KEYWORDS Event/ festival studies; feminist research methodology; citizen science; innovative methods. ABSTRACT The research project ‘Gendering Cities of Culture’ investigates culture-led, urban mega-events in their potential to produce socio-cultural values through the programming of cultural activities. In specific, I examine the production of gender equality in the celebration of the title UK City of Culture in 2017 in the northern English city of Hull. A key source for such analysis bases on citizens’ perceptions of produced values in the mega- events. For this interest, I collaborate with a team of ‘observing participants,’ which are ten citizens selected in regards to gender, age, location of residence. The individuals support the investigation as they experience, explore and observe selected cultural activities on behalf of the research project. In this paper, I discuss the potential and characteristics of this method informed and inspired by feminist methodologies, field-specific requirements of event research and citizen science approach. INTRODUCTION In this paper, I explore an innovative, qualitative methodological approach for event research. Applied within the research project ‘Gendering Cities of Culture,’ the presented approach is mutually a collaborative practice as well as a research method, which aims to document audience’s perception of cultural activities such as festivals, exhibitions and performances.