Heather Ford
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Heather Ford | |
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Born | Pietermaritzburg, South Africa |
Occupation(s) | researcher, blogger, journalist, entrepreneur, and activist |
Heather Ford is a
Early life and education
Ford was born in
In 1996, Ford went to Rhodes University to study a four-year Bachelor of Journalism degree majoring in communication design.[4] During her time at Rhodes, Ford was arts and culture editor for the Rhodes student newspaper, Activate,[5] and performed in numerous plays and dance dramas. She co-wrote and starred in the National Arts Festival Fringe Festival play: 'Sincerely, Colour' in 1997[6] and was considering a career as a dance choreographer before she decided to find work in the media sector.
Career
After working as Digital Information Manager for
In 2003, she received a scholarship from Benetech to attend Stanford University as a fellow in the Reuters Digital Vision Program.[1] Volunteering for Creative Commons while she was at Stanford, she decided to go back to South Africa at the end of her studies to start Creative Commons South Africa[1] and a program entitled "Commons-sense: Towards an African Digital Information Commons" at the Wits University Link Centre. She has a postgraduate certificate in telecomms policy from the University of the Witwatersrand.[4] During 2006 Heather co-founded The African Commons Project, a South African non-profit organisation working on the commons in Africa.[1]
In 2006, Ford was appointed executive director of iCommons, a UK private charitable corporation. Working with Creative Commons, iCommons collaborates with communities interested in open education, access to knowledge, free software, open access publishing and free culture. After iCommons, in 2009 Ford founded the GeekRetreat, an event aiming to bring together technologists from around South Africa to discuss improving the local Internet.[7] She said in 2010 that Creative Commons and Wikipedia are not inclusive enough for the developing world.[2]
Ford was previously a member of the advisory board of the
Ford worked as a digital
Boards
- The African Commons Project Board: 2006–present
- The Wikimedia Foundation Advisory Board: 2007–2009
- iCommons Board: 2005–2006
Honors and awards
- 2009 – UC Berkeley School of Information Fellowship
- 2009 – Book of South African Women - An annual register of South Africa's top women in business, technology
- 2004 – Stanford BASES social entrepreneurship award for Bookbox, a web-based jukebox of digital books in languages from around the world
- 2003 – Reuters Digital Vision Program Scholarship awarded by Benetech
- 2003 – British Chevening Scholarship awarded by the British government
- 2000 – Rhodes University Academic Colours and Distinction
Publications
- 2009: Open culture in Global Information Society Watch (GISWatch) 2009
- 2013: Getting to the source. Where does Wikipedia get its information from? Coauthored with Shilad Sen, David R. Musicant, and Nathaniel Miller, Presented at WikiSym 2013
- 2022: Writing the Revolution: Wikipedia and the Survival of Facts in the Digital Age. MIT Press. 2022.
- 2023:
- Ford, Heather; Pietsch, Tamson; Tall, Kelly (29 October 2023). "Gender and the invisibility of care on Wikipedia". Big Data & Society. 10 (2). .
- Ford, Heather (2023). "Chapter 13: Becoming eventful through data: The mediated construction of historic events in the age of data". In Coleman, Stephen; Sorensen, Lone (eds.). Handbook of Digital Politics (2nd ed.). Edward Elgar Publishing. pp. 196–241. ISBN 9781800377578.
References
- ^ a b c d "300 Young South Africans: Civil Society (Part 2)". Mail & Guardian. South Africa. 12 June 2009. Retrieved 20 February 2011.
- ^ a b c "200 Young South Africans: Technology". Mail & Guardian. South Africa. 11 June 2010. Retrieved 20 February 2011.
- S2CID 32835293.
- ^ a b c d e "Book of South African Women: Technology". Mail & Guardian. South Africa. 3 August 2009. Retrieved 20 February 2011.
- ^ "Heather Ford". LinkedIn. Retrieved 20 February 2011.
- ^ TEDx Talks (14 March 2016), Wikipedia and Me | Dr. Heather Ford | TEDxUniversityofLeeds, retrieved 4 June 2019
- ^ Shapshak, Toby (11 October 2009). "It's not all Geek any more". Times Live. Archived from the original on 15 October 2009. Retrieved 20 February 2011.
- ^ "Advisory Board - Former members". Wikimedia Foundation. Archived from the original on 27 May 2016. Retrieved 4 November 2022.
- ^ a b "Q & A with Heather Ford: Makmende, Web Ethnography and Ostrich". 29 September 2011. Retrieved 29 September 2011.
- ^ "Thoughtleader". Thoughtleaders. Archived from the original on 27 May 2014. Retrieved 13 April 2010.
- ^ "Global Voices". Global Voices author. Retrieved 13 April 2010.
- ^ "InternetEconomy". Internet Economy podcasts. Archived from the original on 21 April 2010. Retrieved 13 April 2010.
- ^ "Africa's most influential women in Science and Tech". 14 September 2011. Archived from the original on 31 May 2017. Retrieved 29 September 2011.
- ^ "Heather Ford: DPhil Student". Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford. Retrieved 2 August 2014.
- ^ Ford, H.; Graham, M.; Meyer, E. Fact factories: Wikipedia and the power to represent. Oxford University Research Archive (Thesis).
- ^ "Dr Heather Ford". University of Leeds. Archived from the original on 17 October 2017. Retrieved 15 December 2017.
- ^ "Heather Ford Profile". University of Technology Sydney. Retrieved 11 February 2024.
- ^ Hogge, Becky (3 November 2022). "Writing the Revolution — Wikipedia and the online battle over facts". Financial Times. Retrieved 4 November 2022.
External links
- iCommons "People"
- Heather Ford's blog
- Heather Ford on X
- "Africa and the Digital Information Commons: An Overview"[permanent dead link], with Chris Armstrong
- Commons-sense: Towards an African Digital Information Commons
- Reuters Digital Vision Fellowship
- Creative Commons South Africa
- University of the Witwatersrand Link Centre
- Heather Ford's Interview Video