User:Iopensa/Wikimania 2025/Decolonising knowledge
Decolonising knowledge on Wikipedia
- Format: Roundtable 40 minutes
- GLAM
- Language: English
- Themes: campaigns, collaboration, affiliates
- Experience needed: everyone can participate
- Participation: Hybrid
Abstract (150 words)
[edit]The roundtable "Decolonising Knowledge on Wikipedia" aims to contribute to inclusivity in the Wikimedia projects by interrogating our practices, structures, and sources and critically highlighting power dynamics. This roundtable involves current Wikimedia projects and initiatives already focusing on decolonising knowledge, it triggers a broader discussion and collects experiences, examples and recommendations to expand and scale those practices.
Description - aims and objectives (500 works)
[edit]Decolonising knowledge on Wikipedia requires a critical examination of our practices, structures, and sources, while actively addressing power imbalances. It is a collective and global effort that necessitates engagement from both individuals and institutions to foster a more inclusive and representative knowledge ecosystem.
This roundtable brings together ongoing Wikimedia projects and initiatives dedicated to decolonising knowledge on an international scale in Africa, South America and Europe. By facilitating discussions both onsite and online, it serves as a dynamic space for enlarging the network and exchanging ideas, methodologies, and best practices. The hybrid format facilitates participation, enabling contributors from diverse backgrounds to share their perspectives and experiences in shaping a more equitable Wikimedia landscape.
The core objective of this initiative is to enhance inclusivity across Wikimedia projects by challenging existing structures and critically evaluating the sources that shape knowledge production. Through open dialogue and collaboration, the roundtable seeks to amplify underrepresented voices, recognise marginalised histories, and promote alternative narratives that have historically been overlooked or excluded.
By engaging in this discourse, participants contribute to a growing repository of knowledge that reflects diverse cultures, identities, and experiences. The session will not only highlight existing challenges but also identify actionable strategies for fostering a more just and representative digital knowledge space.
Through collective reflection and shared learning, this initiative aspires to build sustainable frameworks for decolonising knowledge on Wikipedia. The insights gathered from this discussion will inform future approaches, offering practical recommendations and concrete steps towards a more inclusive and equitable Wikimedia movement.
Link to the theme
[edit]Decolonising knowledge is essential to guarantee that the knowledge the Wikimedia projects promote and disseminate is truly inclusive. It interrogates our practices, structures and sources and critically highlights power dynamics. Decolonising knowledge is a shared and ongoing process which involves anyone at an international level. Furthermore, it is a topic which allows us to openly discuss and reconsider provenance and the heritage preserved and valorised by GLAMs. It is a topic which deeply contributes to the theme of "Wikimania@20: Inclusivity. Impact. Sustainability."
Yourself and your experience (150 words - no extra space for adding info)
[edit]The roundtable involves Wikimania Nairobi's online and offline participants.
The team promoting the submission:
Asuru Lutherking Petercan: research assistant in architectural history and heritage preservation. Training GLAM professionals to contribute to the Wikimedia projects and starting an architectural heritage community in Nigeria.
Sandra Schmitt Soster: GLAM and Culture Manager of Wikimedia Brasil since 2022. She holds a PhD in Architecture and Urbanism by University of São Paulo.
Chantal Edie Ntube: artist with a background in history and political science. She is the project lead of "Going Back Through Memory Lane Rights for Time network" in Yaounde, Cameroon.
Achal Prabhala: public health activist in India, Brazil and South Africa. Former Wikimedia Foundation Advisory Board member, initiator in 2011 of a project around oral citations.
Iolanda Pensa: researcher at SUPSI / national coordinator GLAMs at Wikimedia Italia, lead of Decolonising Knowledge in Switzerland.
Isla Haddow-Flood and Florence Devouard, Wiki in Africa.
Experience in public speaking
[edit]All the team members proposing the roundtable have experience in public speaking and leading events. Please refer above for a short bio of the team promoting the event.
Have you presented the topic before
[edit]The proposal is deeply rooted in many Wikimedia activities and it is designed as an opportunity to organise knowledge and to enlarge and further develop the topic of Decolonising knowledge on Wikipedia. It is not a new topic, but at the moment, the projects and initiatives implemented are not sufficiently coordinated. Furthermore, this topic is gaining importance at an international level among GLAMs, making the cooperation with the Wikimedia projects on this topic particularly relevant and timely.
The team of the roundtable already worked together in the frame of the WikiAfrica Hour event about Decolonising knowledge on Wikipedia https://www.wikiinafrica.org/videos/wikiafrica-hour-43-decolonising-knowledge-on-wikipedia/.
This roundtable is an opportunity to enlarge and further develop knowledge in this area serving the Wikimedia movement.
Other needs
[edit]The roundtable will focus on collecting experiences in presence and online by using the Etherpad. We focus the online interventions to written contributions. Experiences, practices and approaches presented in the roundtable will be published also on the Wikimedia projects.