Like many notable women of color in STEM, Hernandez’s work was missing on Wikipedia – until just two months ago, when four undergraduates living across the country from Hernandez came together to add her story.

“Jessica Hernandez is an Indigenous scientist who gets very little exposure and advocates for communities and groups that are also underrepresented,” said Dayanara Mendez, a first-year English student at Lone Star College-Kingwood, a community college in Houston, Texas. “To get the chance to write an article about a woman of color in STEM, especially since I’m Hispanic and I always love the chance to learn more about other Latinos, made this a great opportunity.”

Classmates Natalie Ramirez, Alexandria Ravina, and McKenna Sealy joined Mendez to create the new Wikipedia article for Hernandez, working collaboratively to outline sections, find high quality sources for citations, and review each other’s research and writing. For Sealy, the Wikipedia assignment was a chance to share an inspiring and important perspective.

“Jessica Hernandez has a lot to offer our world from her Indigenous perspective and research as an environmental scientist, activist, author, and researcher,” said Sealy. “She’s learned a lot through her family heritage about the environment, and that, combined with her formal education, can be very powerful in helping us to better understand the world around us and how to take care of it.”

Sealy noted the power of Wikipedia in shaping awareness and understanding of notable figures like Hernandez, emphasizing its accessibility.

“Because of Wikipedia, no one needs a database that costs money to learn more about people making a great impact on the world,” Sealy explained. “The assignment helped me realize that we can all contribute to big and important things even if we feel small and don’t think we can have an impact.”

At first, Mendez dreaded the research for the project, but once she began, quickly changed her mind.

“When I actually started, I found that it was pretty fun,” Mendez shared. “It was kind of challenging and I’m grateful for it because it was something new. It helped kill the boredom that I normally get from writing the same kind of essay consistently.” 

While she was a little nervous for the Wikipedia page to go live for the world’s eyes, Mendez received positive feedback from friends and would look forward to another Wikipedia assignment in the future.

Sealy agreed, noting the feeling of accomplishment when they finalized and published the article.

“This was a great assignment compared to a traditional assignment because rather than turning in a paper no one will ever see again, I’m actually making a difference and my work will be seen,” said Sealy.

Guided by course instructor Dr. Brian Shmaefsky, the group’s Wikipedia assignment is part of a larger Wiki Education initiative sponsored by the Broadcom Foundation, which encourages the creation of new biographies of diverse people in STEM on Wikipedia.

Interested in incorporating a Wikipedia assignment into your course? Visit teach.wikiedu.org to learn more about the free assignment templates and resources that Wiki Education offers to instructors in the United States and Canada.

Explore other related stories:

• Adding Claibourne Smith’s Wikipedia article: “like it was a piece of art that I kept looking at”
• Telling the story of an African American chemist
• Clovis students add biographies of diverse people in STEM

“Wiki Education does such phenomenally important work that I always pounce on every opportunity to work with them,” said Shira Klein, associate professor and chair of the Department of History at Chapman University. “Wikipedia’s articles about history and religion have real-life impact on the world. What people read on Wikipedia shapes the opinions they form about politics, social justice, and so forth. Therefore we need to make sure Wikipedia gets it right, and this project is going to help that goal.”

All advisory committee members bring multidisciplinary experiences and professional networks to support Wiki Education’s goal to improve Wikipedia’s coverage of historically marginalized populations and subject areas. Committee members will also provide valuable feedback on the Wikipedia Student Program framework and curricular materials; each has incorporated the “Wikipedia assignment” into their own courses.

Heather J. Sharkey, professor and chair of the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at the University of Pennsylvania, “jumped at the chance” to join the advisory committee, noting her rewarding experience writing for Wikipedia and working with the Wikipedia Student Program.

“Wiki Education offers user-friendly tutorials that guide students (and their teachers!) through the nuts-and-bolts of writing for Wikipedia ethically and with rigor,” said Sharkey. “Students end up thinking about the content of articles and potential biases; the quality of sources, citations, and literary style; and the nature of “content gaps,” meaning topics that are missing, but that deserve to be covered, for the sake of social equity. Students learn, and the world benefits from their scholarship!”

Advisory committee members will engage in three areas of focus: outreach and recruitment, conference participation, and review of curricular materials. Activities will include facilitating a Teaching with Wikipedia workshop at their home institutions, presenting about the program and related research at humanities conferences, and reviewing new Wiki Education resources associated with the Knowledge Equity initiative.

Humanities & Social Justice Advisory Committee members:

David-James Gonzales

Dr. David-James (DJ) Gonzales is an Assistant Professor of History at Brigham Young University where he teaches and researches on race, migration, and Latino (a/x/e) politics in the US. He has been teaching with Wikipedia since 2018 and enjoys teaching students how to incorporate historical research methodology into public-facing writing projects like Wikipedia articles and op-eds as a way of using their education to “give back” to society. Collectively, his students have authored 180 articles, edited an additional 492 articles, and added approximately 8,500 references to Wikipedia. As of spring 2024, the work produced by his students on Wikipedia has garnered over 13 million views.

Shira Klein

Dr. Shira Klein is Associate Professor and Chair of History at Chapman University. Her two primary areas of expertise are Italian Jewish history and knowledge production on Wikipedia. She is co-author of “Wikipedia’s Intentional Warping of Polish-Jewish History” in the peer-reviewed Journal of Holocaust Research. Published in February 2023, this article has been viewed over 52,000 times and reported on in newspapers worldwide, including Slate Magazine, Der Spiegel (Germany), and Gazeta Wyborcza (Poland). Altmetric has ranked this article’s online visibility in the top 5 percent of 25 million research outputs, and it is under contract to be translated into Polish and Hebrew. Klein’s book Italy’s Jews from Emancipation to Fascism (Cambridge University Press) was awarded finalist for the 2018 National Jewish Book Award, and is now under contract to be translated into Hebrew. Klein has received multiple grants, including from the National Foundation for the Humanities, the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture Research, the USC Shoah Foundation, and the Barbieri Foundation for Modern Italian History.

Alexandria Lockett

Dr. Lockett has been editing Wikipedia for 20+ years to improve its content about marginalized persons, cultures, communities, languages, professions, texts, and disciplines. A former professor of Writing and Rhetoric for almost 20 years, she integrated Wikipedia editing into over twenty courses, as well as trained dozens of faculty how to do the same. She has presented her research about Wikipedia across several platforms including WikiCon North America, Black Lunch Table and AfroCrowd events, and publications such as Wikipedia@20: An Incomplete Revolution (MIT Press, 2020). Dr. Lockett has also organized and led several workshops and edit-a-thons in HBCU spaces. She is currently an Independent Scholar and the Director of Lateral Recruiting for a global, woman-owned legal search firm.

Tracy Perkins 

Dr. Tracy Perkins is an Associate Professor in the School of Social Transformation Arizona State University who specializes in social inequality, social movements, and the environment. She began teaching students at Howard University to analyze the politics of knowledge creation and circulation via Wikipedia assignments in 2017, and has been teaching the assignment at ASU since 2020. She and three Howard students co-authored a paper on their experience that was published in Civic Sociology in 2024. See more of her work at tracyperkins.org.

David Sartorius 

Dr. David Sartorius is a historian of Latin America and the Caribbean at the University of Maryland. His book, Ever Faithful: Race, Loyalty, and the Ends of Empire in Spanish Cuba, was published by Duke University Press in 2013, and examines the racial politics of colonial rule, including the support of Cubans of African descent, slave and free, for the Spanish government. Sartorius is currently the co-editor of Social Text, an assistant editor of The Americas, and a member of the organizing collective of Tepoztlán Institute for the Transnational History of the Americas.

Heather J. Sharkey

Dr. Heather J. Sharkey is a Professor in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at the University of Pennsylvania, specializing in the history of the modern Middle East and North Africa.  A firm believer in digital citizenship and public scholarship, she has been partnering with Wiki Education and its Student Program since 2019.  Working in teams, her students have published many new Middle East-related articles on Wikipedia – especially biographies of women and studies of historic buildings. Her students have also added many images to Wikimedia Commons while generating public copyright licenses.  At conferences ranging from the Creative Commons Global Summit to Wikimania, Sharkey has spoken about the educational value of involving students in producing high-quality content for Wikipedia.

Delia Steverson

Delia Steverson, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Alabama, where she specializes in 19th and 20th Century African American Literature, Critical Disability Studies, and Southern Literature. She has been teaching with Wikipedia since 2019 in both lower and upper division undergraduate courses including Survey of African American Literature, Gender and Sexualities in African American Literature, and 21st Century Black Southern Literature. Delia has written about her experience with the Wikipedia project for Wiki Education in an article entitled “Building my Wikipedia confidence.” Her contributions seek to improve the presence of lesser known African American authors, texts, and histories.

“People often acknowledge scientists such as J. Robert Oppenheimer, but other scientists who worked on the project are hardly ever acknowledged,” Connor says. “This is especially true for minority scientists, as people often underestimate them as a result of prejudice. I chose to write on Ralph Gardner-Chavis in order to ensure that his story is heard.”

A chemist, Gardner-Chavis was one of several African Americans whose research advanced the Manhattan Project’s goals. Gardner-Chavis was a chemist whose research on plutonium was critical to the development of the atomic bomb. But after his work on the Manhattan Project, Gardner-Chavis couldn’t find work as a chemist because of racism and ended up waiting tables.

“I detest the fact that many peoples’ contributions were (and still are) undermined because of aspects like race and gender,” Connor says. “Discrimination can cause important research to remain unnoticed, which is detestable. Regardless of who someone is, their works should be made known, and they should be acknowledged. I hope that my article will help Ralph Gardner-Chavis and his works become more prominent.”

Connor’s course at Lone Star was on environmental science, and his instructor, Dr. Brian Shmaefsky, was excited to offer the opportunity for his students to create biographies of diverse scientists like Gardner-Chavis through an initiative Wiki Education is running sponsored by the Broadcom Foundation.

“I was excited to use Wikipedia as a means of providing students with accessible real-world writing experiences,” Dr. Shmaefsky says. “The students were much more engaged in writing the Wikipedia entries than they were with other assignments. I fully believe that STEM fields advance more equitability with diverse representation. Writing biographies of individuals from diverse backgrounds better reflects the true diversity of the scientific community.”

Connor says the hardest part for him was finding sources that met Wikipedia’s Reliable sources policy. In his research, he tried to locate coverage in academic journals, but found that challenging due to the same historical marginalization of the work of scientists of color that led to Gardner-Chavis not being well known. Wikipedia, however, offered an opportunity to shed light on his work — once Connor dug up a few sources.

“My students gained insights into the varied challenges, contributions, and experiences of scientists who are underrepresented in textbooks, general reading books, and online resources,” Dr. Shmaefsky says. “Students began discussing how the unique cultural perspectives of underrepresented scientists influence the breadth, direction, and emphasis of research investigations.”

In the class, students discussed how having biographies of relevant scientists can influence students into pursuing a career in science, when they can have a role model to look up to from a similar background. That’s exactly why the Broadcom Foundation is funding this initiative, which encourages creation of new biographies of diverse people in STEM.

Professors, though, don’t just participate for this reason; they also want to make sure students are gaining core skills, and this project does that, according to Dr. Shmaefsky.

“Based on what I assessed from my students, the Wikipedia assignment encouraged students to learn effective research skills that included the ability to gather and evaluate accurate information from various sources,” he says “It also provided students with an understanding of the guidelines and ethical norms of online digital communication. The Wikipedia assignment was more effective than traditional teaching at instilling these skills.”

Connor found the whole experience rewarding, and he hopes to continue editing Wikipedia in the future. He’s grateful for the support of his partner, Christopher Voss, as well as for Dr. Shmaefsky for giving him the assignment in the first place.

“I definitely prefer writing for Wikipedia as opposed to a traditional assignment or term paper. This is because a Wikipedia article will continue to be edited and viewed. This is very different from academic papers, as those usually get filed away after you turn them in,” he says.

Mahmoud “Mody” Hassan is a freshman at Rutgers University Newark. It was his first term of college, and he had just started at Rutgers after being born and raised in Egypt. So there were a lot of changes in his life when he showed up to Dr. Laura Porterfield’s class on “Education and Social Change in the Black Diaspora” and learned he’d be writing a Wikipedia article as a class assignment. Dr. Porterfield was participating in a project run by Wiki Education and funded by the Broadcom Foundation to increase the number of biographies on Wikipedia of diverse people in STEM.

“The concept of making a page on Wikipedia sounded too crazy and made me consider dropping the class,” Mody admits. “But I never did.”

Despite that initial nervousness, Mody dug in on the assignment. He chose to write about Claibourne Smith, an African American chemist who helped advance Delaware State University, a Historically Black College and University (HBCU).

“After reading about him and how much information about him was nowhere to be found, I decided that he should get a page on Wikipedia,” he says.

Mody tackled two different areas of learning: (1) learning about Claibourne Smith and his achievements, and (2) learning how to edit Wikipedia. While he didn’t enjoy the technical difficulties of creating the page, he loved publishing the final article.

“So this assignment took longer than the other assignments, but the most important and different thing is that this article was going to go online for people to read and consume knowledge from, and it was my responsibility that those people weren’t misled by what I wrote,” Mody says. “The feeling of having the assignment done and having it published online for everyone to see was such a flex, and I loved that part.”

He hopes more faculty participate; if they’re going to ask students to write the equivalent of an article anyway, why not publish it on Wikipedia so everyone can benefit? And the experience has taught him useful skills about editing Wikipedia. While he’s busy with schoolwork during the term, he’s already planning to create more articles on the Arabic Wikipedia this summer.

“Making a page about Smith meant a lot to me because I felt like it was a piece of art that I kept looking at,” Mody says.

“Our world is full of rich human stories and horizon-expanding knowledge that should be accessible to all, but that have been left out, suppressed, or otherwise hidden from public view,” says Maria Sachiko Cecire, Program Officer in Higher Learning at the Mellon Foundation. “We are delighted to partner with Wiki Education in this ambitious social justice campaign to bring more information about the full range of human creation and expression to the largest and most consulted reference work on the planet. We are especially thrilled that the significant research and writing skills of humanities faculty and students at colleges and universities across the country will power this essential work.”

We define knowledge equity content as that which pertains to the narratives of women and other non-male gender identities, those with disabilities, LGBTQ+ people, people of color, and others whose perspectives have been historically marginalized by dominant groups. Indeed, the dominant group of Wikipedia contributors are currently well-educated white men from North America and Europe. Featured Articles on Wikipedia’s landing page are largely authored by this group and often lacking a social justice lens. 

Wikipedia editors, including new ones, tend to stick with the way things have always been written if not guided to where the gaps exist. Wiki Education’s resources and support will empower students to add content about knowledge equity, while still adhering to Wikipedia’s rigorous rules on sourcing, writing style, and layout. 

Students will specifically focus on re-shaping the landscape of humanities articles pertaining to academic disciplines such as anthropology; archaeology; arts; classics; cultural studies; disability studies; ethics; gender and sexuality studies; history (including history of science); jurisprudence; languages and literature; music; philosophy; racial and ethnic studies; religion; sociology, as well as interdisciplinary topics related to an equitable human experience, like environmental justice.

By the end of 2026, we expect more than 200 million people will have viewed these articles and increased their understanding of communities, cultures, histories, and notable figures that have not received enough media attention elsewhere.

“I’m excited about our partnership with the Mellon Foundation,” says Frank Schulenburg, Executive Director of Wiki Education. “This initiative will significantly impact the students involved and the countless Wikipedia users who will gain free access to representative and trustworthy information. Our Knowledge Equity initiative is a key aspect of our mission, and I’m especially pleased that we’re starting a large campaign to enhance content in the Humanities.”

This project will catalyze our ongoing Knowledge Equity campaign by significantly growing participation among new humanities faculty and supporting Wikipedia use in their courses. Wiki Education will activate its existing network of academic associations and partners and identify new opportunities to collaborate. Our work will be guided by a newly established Humanities and Social Justice Advisory Committee, composed of seven exemplary humanities scholars who have taught with Wikipedia through our Wikipedia Student Program with a knowledge equity lens. Our program team will onboard and support 800 humanities courses that add over 11 million words, powerfully diversifying who and what you see on Wikipedia. 

Contact Kathleen Crowley, Director of Donor Relations, at kathleen@wikiedu.org if you’re interested in growing this impact. 

About The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation is the nation’s largest supporter of the arts and humanities. Since 1969, the Foundation has been guided by its core belief that the humanities and arts are essential to human understanding. The Foundation believes that the arts and humanities are where we express our complex humanity, and that everyone deserves the beauty, transcendence, and freedom that can be found there. Through our grants, we seek to build just communities enriched by meaning and empowered by critical thinking, where ideas and imagination can thrive. Learn more at mellon.org

About Wiki Education
Wiki Education is a small, high-impact nonprofit organization systematically building and expanding the content on the English Wikipedia. Our goal is to represent the sum of all human knowledge by making Wikipedia more accurate, representative, and complete through our Wikipedia Student Program and Scholars & Scientists Program. These programs have trained students in higher education classrooms across the United States and Canada and subject matter experts from around the world how to add their knowledge to the most referenced online encyclopedia. We bring 19% of all new contributors to Wikipedia, who have written over hundred thousand articles viewed hundreds of millions of times.

Mellon Foundation logo used courtesy of Mellon Foundation, all rights reserved.

For the Clovis students, it was an opportunity to see themselves in the people they were writing about. Designated as a Hispanic-Serving Institution, Clovis is located in Fresno, California.

“By adding a biography of a diverse person, I felt like I was bringing their story out in the world. Not many would know about this individual but because we started his article, it would allow others to learn about him,” says Kaitlyn Chhay, a first-year student at Clovis who is planning to major in biology. “My favorite part about writing for Wikipedia is knowing that in some way I am kind of leaving an impact on this website. Now forever on, I will know that I was one person of a group who started his article and brought his name out into the light.”

Benson Karki, a computer science major, echoed Kaitlyn’s sentiments.

“Adding a biography of diverse individuals in STEM to Wikipedia is significant to me because it serves as an inspiration for individuals from similar backgrounds,” he says. “Highlighting the accomplishments of someone like Juan G. Santiago, whose work was not widely showcased on the internet, is essential in demonstrating the possibilities within STEM fields to a broader audience.”

Bringing diverse people’s accomplishments to light is the goal of the project the students participated in, funded by the Broadcom Foundation. By adding diverse biographies to Wikipedia, the project seeks to help students see themselves in the heroes and heroines of science.

“As a person of color coming from Lebanese immigrant parents, adding a biography of a person also of color in STEM means for me that I can make it,” Danny Aoun says. “Having a role model who has pursued their dreams as a person of color and has a commonality with me in neuroscience motivates me to strive in whatever I am currently doing because my end goal will be to make as big of an impact on this world that Steve Ramirez has.”

Danny says he plans to transfer to a four-year college after finishing his first two years at Clovis. He hopes to major in psychology or psychological and brain sciences, and dreams of completing a doctoral degree. So creating the biography of a neuroscientist was particularly meaningful to him.

“My favorite part about writing for Wikipedia was learning what this underrepresented STEM researcher has done for modern neuroscience,” he says. “Neuroscience is such a fascinating field, so I enjoyed learning about the research he has done and what it means for the future.”

Juliet Herzog, another Clovis student, is also planning to transfer to a four-year school, and is majoring in biology.

“It was interesting to research and write about someone influential in STEM because of my interest in science,” she says. “Writing this article felt rewarding. As my group did research for the microbiologist we were creating an article for, James M. Jay, it seemed like he was influential in his field. From our research, he seemed dedicated to microbiology, and this was reflected in the awards honored to him. For this reason, I am glad he has a Wikipedia article that others can continue to make contributions to and others can read.”

Of course, not only did students learn about the people whose accomplishments they were featuring on Wikipedia — they also learned about Wikipedia itself.

“One crucial aspect I’d like to emphasize is how meticulously Wikipedia articles are crafted. They are credible, unbiased, and extensively backed by citations, challenging the misconception that they are not reliable sources; a significant lesson I learned through this assignment,” Benson says.

And it’s not just learning about Wikipedia; students gained core research and writing skills as well.

“One thing I really appreciate about this project was the skills developed from writing this type of article; for example, research and writing objectively,” Juliet says. “I thought it was an interesting project because of how different it was from past writing assignments. I am mostly familiar with writing argumentative essays or thematic essays, so this writing was very different for me. Furthermore, this project not only helps students, but also Wikipedia as this project raises awareness among students of writing for this website.”

Danny agrees. While he loved sharing Steve Ramirez’s contributions to neuroscience research, he also enjoyed gaining skills along the way.

“My second favorite part about writing about Wikipedia was learning information literacy. I did not only realize how to be literate at gathering information but how important it is in our day and age where seeking accurate information is a necessity,” he says. “I grew passionate for this project through the information I was learning, and this ties back to what Wikipedia is, a worldwide, free encyclopedia. Being able to provide more information to the public on what I may be researching in the future and supporting Wikipedia’s journey to make a more equitable encyclopedia has been a great honor.”

Visit teach.wikiedu.org to learn how to incorporate a Wikipedia assignment into your own course.

Header image of students in the class courtesy Melanie Sanwo, all rights reserved.

Chemist Harold B. Evans was one of a handful of African American scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project. A photo of him has been included in the Wikipedia article on African-American scientists and technicians on the Manhattan Project for several years — but Wikipedia lacked his biography until student De’Narie Breeland created it this year.

De’Narie wrote the article on Evans as a class assignment for Corry Stevenson’s Principles of Engineering class at Denmark Technical College. Denmark, a Historically Black College and University, is located in Allendale, South Carolina, where De’Narie is from. De’Narie and her classmates were assigned to create a biography of a diverse person in STEM with support from Wiki Education as part of an initiative sponsored by the Broadcom Foundation to support diversity in STEM on Wikipedia.

“At first, I was confused that I was going to be writing an article or biography. I have never written a biography or article for Wikipedia or for a college class,” De’Narie says.

But she didn’t let that stop her. She jumped right in and started researching Evans’s contributions.

“I chose Harold B. Evans because he was an African American male who had an opportunity that many African Americans could not have,” De’Narie says. “It was very meaningful because us African Americans have been overlooked in the past and I love to see African Americans achieve in something so big.”

She learned the ins and outs of Wikipedia editing through Wiki Education’s online trainings, with support from Wiki Education’s Wikipedia Expert Brianda Felix. And, in addition to learning more about Wikipedia, she also learned about the importance of African American scientists. De’Narie isn’t sure what she wants to pursue career-wise yet — cosmetology, midwifery, and real estate are all of interest — but she enjoyed researching Evans and adding citations about his life.

“I learned that there were a few, only a few, African Americans who were able to help on the Manhattan Project,” De’Narie says. “This experience was really great.”

Visit teach.wikiedu.org to learn how to incorporate a Wikipedia assignment into your own course

“Women of color are underrepresented throughout Wikipedia,” Dr. Clark explains. “I designed the course with a goal of our students helping to improve the representations of Black women on Wikipedia.”

Mission accomplished, according to Zainab Ahmed, one of the students in the course.

“Writing a biography of a Black woman in STEM was very meaningful to me because it was allowing Black women in a field that is mainly dominated by White men to be acknowledged,” she says. “It also provides more access to Black girls who are interested in STEM to be able to research other people like in that field. It also stops downplaying the role Black women have played in the STEM field.”

Zainab and her classmates worked on biographies as part of an initiative to increase the diversity of Wikipedia’s STEM biographies, funded by the Broadcom Foundation. Wiki Education’s staff provided support for students as they researched and wrote the biographies. Zainab says as she researched the contributions of the woman she chose, she was inspired and excited to learn more about her contributions.

And, of course, she learned about editing Wikipedia. While she’d made a few edits before, she hadn’t dived into writing a full article before. She enjoyed the formatting tasks, deciding what information went into subheadings like “Early life” or “Career”.

“In comparison to a traditional term paper I prefer this because it is more research yet less restrictive. I did not have a word limit to meet, I just had to make sure if it was objective and factual,” Zainab says. “I felt like a true editor and writer.”

These learnings are exactly what Dr. Clark wanted her students to get out of the class.

“They definitely learned about the individuals they wrote about. They also learned how underrepresented women of color are on Wikipedia and the implications of that underrepresentation. They saw their work as part of an effort to help improve that representation,” she says. “It allows students to understand how their work contributes to a database that is relied on to provide information to users around the world. It also holds them accountable for their work. It’s not just what your professor thinks, but if your work a valuable contribution to public knowledge.”

Zainab says she felt that accountability. While she was initially “intimidated,” she says, now that she’s learned more about Wikipedia, she wants to keep editing.

“I will definitely continue soon now that I have a more informed understanding of how to do a proper Wikipedia article,” she says.

Visit teach.wikiedu.org to learn how to incorporate a Wikipedia assignment into your own course.

Header image of students in the class courtesy Msia Clark, all rights reserved.

In the 1950’s, the Canadian government set forth a campaign that resulted in the mass expulsion of federal workers, military members, and police force members that identified as or were suspected of being part of the LGBTQ+ community. The institutional persecution of LGBTQ+ people in Canada is known as the Gay Purges and spanned almost half a century from the 1950’s to 1990’s. This significant part of Canadian LGBT history didn’t exist in any language of Wikipedia until a student in Jennifer Evans’ course, History of Sexuality, created it. Fast forward months later, and the article was translated for the French Wikipedia, and is now available for readers in both official languages of Canada. This one example is unfortunately emblematic of the wide scale underrepresentation that the LGBTQ+ community faces on Wikipedia, but students in our program are making significant strides in remedying these content gaps.

If we dig a little deeper, a key influence in the Canadian Gay Purges was the Lavender Scare in the late 1940’s in the United States, where thousands of LGBTQ+ workers across American institutions were expelled from their jobs. Investigations into federal workers’ sexuality continued into the 90’s, and it wasn’t until 2017 that the State Department formally apologized for the Lavender Scare. Despite the lasting impact of these discriminatory practices, the US experienced a major shift in its political culture in 2018 known as the Rainbow wave. This term refers to the unprecedented number of openly LGBTQ+ candidates running for political office in the United States for the 2018 election year. Created by a student in Instructor Diana O’Brien’s course, the Rainbow wave article details the history of LGBTQ+ folks in politics and representation in the US government.

In addition to covering historical discrimination, students across courses also created several articles on activist groups in LGBTQ+ movements. Students from Jennifer Evans History of Sexuality class created the article on an activist organization out of San Diego, CA called San Diego Blood Sisters. The organization sponsored lesbian blood drives in order to help with the country’s blood supply shortage during the AIDs crisis in the 80’s. Other students made sure to create content inclusive of gender identities, like the improvements done to the Sex work movements article. Students in Juana Maria Rodriguez’s Gender and Sexuality in Latinx Pop Culture added a section on transgender sex work movements, highlighting the the intersecting issues faced by transgender people in this line of work due to their transgender identity.

Students working in this specific topic area of LGBTQ+ studies come up against the well-known challenges of establishing notability and finding enough reliable sources to support their topic. It is well established that Wikipedia’s content gaps are a reflection of the broader systemic bias present in society. It is no easy task for student editors to find the necessary information needed to bring these LGBTQ+ topics into existence on Wikipedia. But it is exactly because of their unique position as students in higher education with institutional access to paywalled information that they can increase the much needed representation of LGBTQ+ content on Wikipedia.

In addition to the entries on activism, students also wrote about the cultural and artistic contributions of LGBTQ+ people across the globe. A student in Danielle M. DeMuth’s class, translated the Spanish article on LGBT literature in Iceland for the English Wikipedia. While students in Alma Lopez’s Queer Arts class, generated the biographies of several queer artists like Joey Terrill and Homo Riot. Together, the articles mentioned throughout this blog have been viewed around 14,376 times. By participating in knowledge creation for the most visited encyclopedia in the world, student editors are ensuring the legacy and resilience of the LGBTQ+ community is there for thousands to read about.