Wikipedia:Meetup/Toronto/Black History Edit-A-Thon (February 2022)/Kickoff

Overview
Please join us for a kick-off panel on Monday, 7 February 2022 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.

Speakers
Dr. Cheryl Thompson is an Assistant Professor at The Creative School at Ryerson University; she holds a PhD in Communication Studies from McGill. Dr. Thompson is the author of 2 recent books – Uncle: Race, Nostalgia, and the Politics of Loyalty published in 2021, and Beauty in a Box: Detangling the Roots of Canada’s Black Beauty Culture published in 2019. Dr. Thompson’s research includes Canada’s history of blackface as performance and anti-Black racism, and she is co-producing a feature documentary film on these topics. In 2021, Dr. Thompson was a recipient of an Ontario Early Researcher Award and was named to the Royal Society of Canada’s College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists.

Collette "Coco" Murray is an award-winning social entrepreneur, cultural arts programmer, arts educator, mentor, instructor, and writer in the dance sector. Her work centers on cultural education, the African diaspora and dance and culturally-responsive arts programming. Recently, a finalist in Toronto's Artscape Foundation & Urban Land Institute's inaugural Tim Jones Placemaking Award, she is recipient of Toronto Arts Foundation's 2019 Community Arts Award. Miss Coco is a Toronto-born dancer of South American heritage with 20 years of experience in the arts sector. She is working towards a PhD in Dance Studies at York University.

Moderator
Dr. Mark Campbell is a DJ, an Assistant Professor and Associate Chair in the Department of Arts, Culture and Media at the University of Toronto Scarborough, and a curator. His research explores the relationships between Afrosonic innovations and notions of the human. Dr. Campbell is a former Banting Postdoctoral Fellow in the department of Fine Arts at the University of Regina. He is currently the Principal Investigator in an SSHRC funded research project on Hip Hop Archives. Dr. Campbell has spent two decades embedded within the Toronto hip hop scene operating from community engaged praxis as both a DJ and a Curator.