Yorkshire’s Women Scientists and Innovators Editathon

News | Posted on Monday 13 January 2020

Join staff and students in an event to improve representation of ‘Yorkshire’s Women Scientists and Innovators’ on Wikipedia.

Dr Namrata Ganneri (Commonwealth Rutherford Fellow in Dept. History and the Centre for Global Health Histories), together with the University’s Athena Swan initiative and Wikimedia (UK) are supporting an Editathon (“edit”+ “marathon”) which seeks to improve the representation of ‘Yorkshire’s Women Scientists and Innovators’ on Wikipedia. We will focus on Yorkshire’s women (including trans and non-binary individuals) scientists, academics, clinicians/physicians and innovators who do not have Wikipedia entries or whose entries could do with improvement. 

The event will be held from 12-5pm, Tuesday 4 February 2020 in the University Library Exhibition Space and includes lunch and refreshments (12-1pm). It will be inaugurated by Professor Debbie Smith.

In this Editathon, we will learn how to edit and add information and participate in the open knowledge community whilst working together with archivists, academic colleagues and Wikimedia experts. Participants will acquire technical skills to create and edit digital content but there will be an opportunity for networking and collaboration. It is hoped that a York-based gender-sensitive community of Wiki editors will continue the project independently thereafter.

You can get involved in two ways:

1. Sign up and spend the afternoon editing and directly contributing to improving the visibility of Yorkshire’s women scientists in Wikipedia, or,

2. If you can’t make it on the day, you can nominate the name, or names of female scientists whose presence on Wikipedia is notable by their absence.

To sign up or nominate please contact Sarah Hall sarah.k.hall@york.ac.uk by 20 January 2020. Alternatively, you can sign up here.
Spaces will be limited so sign up early to avoid disappointment.