Digital Volunteering with Wikipedia
The fourth year of the Edinburgh Award for Digital Volunteering with Wikipedia concluded on 31st March 2025.
Seven students (and one staff volunteer) completed this extracurricular digital research project amassing both the requisite 55-80 hours of volunteering time AND the significant & demonstrable impact in improving the topic coverage of their chosen project area on the free and open encyclopedia, Wikipedia.
Their projects covered a wide range of topics which often complemented their studies (and at times provided a respite/holiday from their studies) as well as, importantly, enhancing & evidencing their graduate capabilities and digital research skills in such diverse project areas as:
- Scots Law;
- Swedish and Hispanic literature;
- Greek and Roman historical sites;
- Religion in Spain;
- Biochemistry;
- the History of Brunei;
- Qingtian and its diasporas;
- Health and Culture in Nigeria.
By the award’s completion, our 2025 Edinburgh Award achievers had contributed over 80,000 words and 1200 references to the largest reference work on the internet, and their work had amassed over 1 million pageviews from interested readers all around the world.
The student achievers were then presented with their certificate of completion, and record of their achievement added on their Higher Education Achievement Report, at a celebration event evening for all Edinburgh Award achievers at the University’s Playfair Library during Reading Week in April.
Watch the 2024/2025 short video presentations on Media Hopper and consider volunteering for this year’s award commencing with a workshop on 21 October 2025 where you can meet other participants and formally enroll.
And we look forward to working with you and toasting your Award success!
Here’s an example ‘end of award’ presentation by one of our 2023 achievers, Ana Aldazabal (pictured above on left), on her project on Latin American literature (suggested by Professor Fiona Mackintosh).
NB: If you are a member of staff at the University then you can also get involved by suggesting topic areas and/or resources (like course reading lists) that would be helpful and of interest to the students for project idea inspiration as to where they could so some good improving topic coverage on Wikipedia.
This adds to the fascinating work of our past award achievers who have helped improve global understanding on other underrepresented topics such as: