Workshop ECAS Basel 2017 - Literature and sources about African cities and open access

Workshop ECAS Basel 2017 - Literature and sources about African cities and open access is a workshop organized by the Laboratory of visual cultural at University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Southern Switzerland (SUPSI) in the frame of the project "Culture and Safety in Africa" in collaboration with the 7th European Conference on African Studies (ECAS), which will be organised and hosted by the University of Basel from 29 June - 1 July 2017.

Workshop title Literature and sources about African cities and territories. How to fill the knowledge gap and the use of open access.
Date 28 June 2017, 14.00-17.30
Venue Department of History, University of Basel, Hirschgässlein 21, 4051 Basel, Switzerland. Room 1 - Ground floor.
WorkshopECAS2017- Leafleat

Location
Department of History, University of Basel, Hirschgässlein 21, 4051 Basel, Switzerland

Date 28 June 2017, 14.00-17.30

Convenors

Convenors Iolanda Pensa, (SUPSI University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Southern Switzerland), Diego Haettenschwiler (Wikimedia CH), Chiara Somajni (SUPSI), Marta Pucciarelli online (SUPSI)
Contact iolanda.pensa@supsi.ch

Structure of the workshop
The workshop aims at documenting African cities (or specific aspects of African cities such as history, geography, demographics, economy, education, culture and contemporary life, transportation, environment, government and politics, notable people) and to make this knowledge and its sources accessible in open access. The workshop contribute to disseminate knowledge about African cities and territories and it foster a better knowledge of open access and its implications.

Practically the workshop is structured into two sessions

  • Overview about open access documents and sources related to African cities and territories.
  • A collaborative and hands-on session about open access organised in working groups.

During the workshop, participants will be involved in the collaborative process of making research results available in open access. More specifically participants will release and making accessible online articles about African cities and specific aspects of these cities such as history, geography, demographics, economy, education, culture and contemporary life, transportation, environment, government and politics, notable people.

Background knowledge about African cities is essential to enhance international studies and to foster better and more in-depth research. Furthermore background knowledge about African cities and territories supports cooperation and development projects and a wider understanding by the general public of the reasoning behind research in African studies and of geopolitical dynamics. Open access is an efficient strategy to make this knowledge fully accessible and available for dissemination, reuse, improvement and translation.

The workshop focuses on Wikipedia because making background knowledge about African cities and territories available on Wikipedia is the most efficient way to disseminate it to the widest audiences. It relies on the most consulted source of online information with 500 million readers and 280 linguistic editions; it produces open content which can be used, reused, disseminated, modified and translated by anyone anywhere for commercial and noncommercial purposes with the only restriction of citing the source and making derivative content accessible with the same open licenses; it contributes to the biggest nonprofit international collaborative project in human history.

Duration 3.5 hours, 14:00-17:30
Title Duration Description
Welcome 15 min. Participants introduction via Icebreaking
Session 1 - Introduction 45 min. Workshop contents, objectives, structure, schedule, tools
Session 2 - Hands-on Wikipedia 15 min. Instructions and Demo Wikipedia BackEnd

(handout with instructions: list of cases)

55 min. Teamwork: find wikipedia articles, analyse your source, upload your sources
Break 10 min.
Session 3 Wrap up 60 min. 15 minutes each group: present the team members’ contributions, present the Wikipedia articles, Present and list the contributions in the Wikipedia Article
10 min. Farewell

Results of the workshop

Documentation about

Application
Please submit an abstract of your article about African cities or a specific aspects of cities such as history, geography, demographics, economy, education, culture and contemporary life, transportation, environment, government and politics, notable people to iolanda.pensa@supsi.ch. Additional information about African cities development status on English Wikipedia available on this page : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiAfrica/African_cities.
Requirements:

  • Please include references and an essential bibliography in your abstract.
  • Submissions can be made in English and French.
  • All abstracts and articles will be released under the license Creative Commons attribution share alike all (CC BY SA 4.0).
  • Please bring a computer to the workshop if possible. Otherwise please inform the organizers.
  • If you do not have already an account, once your submission is accepted we will ask you to register on Wikipedia.

Participants

  • Iolanda Pensa
  • Chaira Somajini
  • Giovanna Santanera
  • Duncan Money
  • Diego Haettenschwiler
  • Fiona Siegenthaler
  • Livia Apa
  • Marta Pucciarelli (online)

Bibliographic suggestions

  • Beatrice Nicolini
  • Christopher Peak
  • Tobias Gandrup
  • Fabian Lehmann
  • Sunday Funmilola Babalola
  • Lisandra Franco de Mendonça (uploaded during the workshop)
  • Rasheed Olaniyi
  • Mauro Nobili (uploaded during the workshop)
  • Nathalie Bonini (uploaded during the workshop)
  • Didier Nativel (uploaded during the workshop)
  • Claudia Castelo

Articles

  • Fiona Siegenthaler
  • Federica Martini
  • Laura Potenti
  • Fabio Vanin
  • Kerstin Pinther
  • Sophie Elliot
  • Jacob Jeuder
  • Marie-Laure Allain Bonilla
  • Estrella Sendra

Related projects and initiatives