After Wikipedia made its debut in 2001, some trends quickly emerged. Most editors were male, topics tended to skew toward geek culture interests like computing and gaming, and only a small fraction of biographies were about women.

More than two decades later, biases and knowledge gaps on Wikipedia of all sorts remain, especially for marginalized communities. But a UC Berkeley professor and her students are working to change that.

Since 2016, ethnic studies professor Juana María Rodríguez has partnered with Wiki Education to teach a range of courses in which students create and edit Wikipedia articles about the contributions of LGBTQ people, especially queer and trans people of color.

“Wikipedia is a public-facing project — it’s the largest encyclopedia in the world,” says Rodríguez. “In a political moment where these histories are actively being erased from public view, having students work on a platform like Wikipedia becomes even more important.”

This is the second episode of a new Berkeley Voices season, featuring UC Berkeley scholars working on life-changing research and the people whose lives are changed by it.

Listen to the episode and read the transcript on UC Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu/podcasts/berkeley-voices).

Music by Blue Dot Sessions.

UC Berkeley photo by Brandon Sánchez Mejia.

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