Wikipedia:Meetup/Toronto/Black History Edit-A-Thon (February 2023)/Kickoff

Overview

Please join us for a kick-off panel on Wednesday, 8 February 2023 from 1-2:30PM.

We are honoured to be joined by our panelists, who will lead us to learn about Black archives and a praxis of care.

Through the panel, we hope to reflect on the potential as well as limits of Wikipedia and Wikidata. We wish for this occasion to set the tone for contributions which centre care toward Black experiences in public history.

Register for the BHE Toronto Kick-off Panel and register for any of the editing session that work with your schedule.

Black Histories Wikipedia & Wikidata Edit-a-thon (2023) - Registration Page

Panelists

Speakers

Debbie Ebanks Schlums is a PhD student and Vanier Scholar in Cinema and Media Studies at York University and a community-engaged artist. Her research documents archiving methodologies in the Jamaican Diaspora. Debbie is also a board member of the SilverShoe Historical Society preserving and caring for local Black history and cemeteries. She has published in the Journal of Interdisciplinary Humanities and co-authored articles in Interactive Documentary: Decolonizing Practice-Based Research, the Interactive Film and Media Journal and the ESSACHESS-Journal of Communication Studies.

Jonsaba Jabbi is a writer, artist, community archivist & historian and co-founder of Building A Black Archive, a grassroots community archive dedicated to building Black archives in Canada. Her work focuses on documenting and archiving contemporary Black Canadian History and Culure spanning from 1960s-2000s, including; Hip Hop and the Black Experience in Canada, Black Geographies in Canada and Black Youth Activism in 1980s Toronto. Her recent projects included being a research assistant on the audio documentary Generation X Marks the Spot: What four Gen X’ers did to activate and co-create a new kind of Caribbean-Canadian culture in Toronto by Dayo Kefenste. She’s also a communications professional who has worked in the nonprofit sector for the last decade with organizations specializing in environmental justice, community arts, youth homelessness, body liberation and the heritage sector. She is of Grenadian and Gambian descent and was born and raised in Toronto, growing up in the Bloor & Dovercourt and Dufferin/St.Clair communities.

Moderator

Funké Aladejebi is a scholar of the twentieth century with a specialization in Black Canadian history. Her recently published book, Schooling the System: A History of Black Women Teachers, explores the intersections of race, gender and access in Canadian educational institutions. She is also the co-editor of “Unsettling the Great White North: Black Canadian History”. Her work explores the importance of Black Canadian women in sustaining their communities and preserving a distinct Black identity within restrictive gender and racial barriers. Dr. Aladejebi has been involved in a variety of community engagement and social justice initiatives in Toronto and her research interests are in oral history, the history of education in Canada, Black feminist thought and transnationalism.