The Constructing Scientific Communities Project explores citizen science in the 19th and 21st centuries. It brings together historical and literary research in the nineteenth century with contemporary scientific practice, looking at the ways in which patterns of popular communication and engagement in nineteenth-century science can offer models for current practice. The project is based at the Universities of Oxford and Leicester, in partnership with three significant scientific institutions: the Natural History Museum; the Hunterian Museum at the Royal College of Surgeons, and the Royal Society. We look at innovative ways of breaking through the public/professional divide. Drawing on historical research, the project works to develop new tools to enable better systems of exchange between professional science, and this growing army of volunteers.