Talk details: TBC
Speaker bio:
Dr Jess Wade is a physicist at Imperial College London whose research investigates new materials for electronic devices. Beyond her daily work as a physicist, Jessica is championing women in scientists by tackling gender bias on Wikipedia.
Only 18.46% of the
biographies on English language Wikipedia are about women β and the percentage of women scientists is even lower. Jess has been addressing this important visibility and representation challenge since 2018, through writing at least one Wikipedia article per day for people who are traditionally underrepresented in STEM fields. This has led to Jess adding over one thousand Wikipedia biographies in the past two years.
The representation of women, minorities, and LGBTQ+ scientists has improved with these pages β Jess is helping to document these stories, and broadcast out their accomplishments on one of the most worldβs most important platforms and popular websites.
Itβs not all plain-sailing: Jess has experienced challenges of contributing to a website where almost all the editors are men β including tackling pages being nominated for deletion, despite these accomplished researchers having received numerous awards and other recognitions.