Dr Kirsty Ross honoured with national award for opening up knowledge to all

Dr Kirsty Ross, Industrial Liaison in the School of Computer Science and co-founder of the University of St Andrews’ Inclusion, Diversity, Equity & Accessibility in Open Knowledge (IDEA) Network, has been named one of five winners of Wikimedia UK’s Silver Jubilee Awards, marking Wikipedia’s 25th anniversary.

The award recognises outstanding contributions to open knowledge. Eighteen people were put forward by the Wikimedia community this year, with the five eventual winners selected by a staff committee and approved by Wikimedia UK’s Board of Trustees. Winners were honoured at a celebration in London on Friday July 3, with the awards presented by Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales.

Dr Ross could not attend in person, as the award ceremony coincided with the University’s Computer Science graduation where four students she had supervised graduated with dissertations centred on Wikimedia projects.

“I was absolutely blown away by the news,” she said, adding that she was equally proud to be marking the graduation of “four awesome Computer Science students” whose work had engaged directly with the Wiki projects.

Her nomination praised her as a partnership lead with an ever-growing list of live initiatives, “genuinely great ideas” for public engagement, and a consistent drive to widen participation in open knowledge, as well as her efforts to ensure recognition for the people she works alongside.

Dr Ross co-founded the IDEA Network in April 2021, alongside Dr Abd Alsattar Ardati, Dr Sara Thomas, Dr Angela Miguel and Dr Alexander Voss from the School of Computer Science. The interdisciplinary network brings together staff and students from St Andrews and beyond who want to make knowledge more open and more representative of society as a whole.

Under Dr Ross’s leadership, the network has grown a wide portfolio of projects. These include Digital Inclusion WikiConnect, pairing staff and postgraduate students to edit Wikipedia articles on digital poverty, and New Scots Digital Connect, a ten-week digital literacy programme for people seeking asylum in Edinburgh delivered with Science Ceilidh, Multi-Cultural Family Base, Lirio Academy, and the University of Edinburgh. The network has also convened events on the role of universities in shaping Scotland’s “Ethical Digital Nation.”

In her teaching capacity, final-year students supervised by Dr Ross have turned decades of volunteer-run heritage data — from sites documenting Women’s History Scotland and Scotland’s brick-making industry — into structured, interactive Wikidata resources, helping safeguard research that might otherwise have been lost to broken links and ageing websites [1]. In collaboration with St Andrews Research Intern Scheme (StARIS) interns, final-year students, and end-users, she has also built WikiOpenCite, a digital tool to explore the impact of academic research across multilingual Wikipedia.

Looking ahead, Dr Ross said she intends to keep building on this work “through the IDEA Network and beyond, for the next 25 years,” crediting the students and volunteers who have contributed alongside her.

She will receive her award in person at a ceremony in Edinburgh this autumn.

[1] DOI: 10.5334/johd.471