Scotland, Slavery and Black History – Wikipedia in the Classroom

This open seminar is a collaboration by Ewan McAndrew our Wikimedian in Residence with Professor Diana Paton and Lucy Parfitt at the University of Edinburgh History Society to improve public knowledge of Scotland’s Black history, and to help make Scotland’s deep connections to Atlantic slavery better understood.
Presenters: Ewan McAndrew, Professor Diana Paton, Scarlett Kiaras-Attari, Lucy Parfitt, Grace King, Sian Davies
Chair: Jon Turner
Session Description
“Historically, knowledge has been concentrated in the hands of the few. Marginalized groups’ histories and perspectives have been excluded by structures of power and privilege. Wikipedia revolutionizes this model, as the world’s largest, free, collaboratively-sourced encyclopedia.” (Wikimedia 2020)
Wikipedia is now twenty years old. In this time, Wikipedia has been shown to be a resource and a form of learning technology to engage with, rather than avoid. Wikipedia assignments allow students to make connections between their learning and empower them to use their digital labour to surface knowledge online to fuel discovery and build understanding globally. Students are intrinsically motivated to address problems of bias and under-representation and this presentation will discuss projects led by students at the History Society to improve coverage of Scotland, Slavery and Black History online.
In a time when many have felt disconnected and powerless, this presentation will showcase stories of student empowerment; providing exemplars of how students have engaged with, and been motivated by, researching and publishing their scholarship online in a real-world application of their teaching and learning.
Importantly, and fittingly these stories will be told by the staff and the students themselves.
This open seminar created by The University of Edinburgh staff and students is available under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence.
Header Image: The simple stone to Henry Dundas, in the family vault. Old Lasswade Kirkyard, by Stephencdickson, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0