Heather Ford is a
South African researcher,
blogger
A blog (a truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order s ...
, journalist, social entrepreneur and
open source
Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...
activist
who has worked in the field of Internet policy, law and management in South Africa, the United Kingdom and the United States. She is the founder of Creative Commons South Africa.
[ She has studied the nature of power within ]Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a multilingual free online encyclopedia written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and using a wiki-based editing system. Wikipedia is the largest and most-read refer ...
and is a researcher at the University of Leeds
, mottoeng = And knowledge will be increased
, established = 1831 – Leeds School of Medicine1874 – Yorkshire College of Science1884 - Yorkshire College1887 – affiliated to the federal Victoria University1904 – University of Leeds
, ...
.
Early life and education
Ford was born in Pietermaritzburg
Pietermaritzburg (; Zulu: umGungundlovu) is the capital and second-largest city in the province of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. It was founded in 1838 and is currently governed by the Msunduzi Local Municipality. Its Zulu name umGungundlovu ...
in the province of Kwa-Zulu Natal
KwaZulu-Natal (, also referred to as KZN and known as "the garden province") is a province of South Africa that was created in 1994 when the Zulu bantustan of KwaZulu ("Place of the Zulu" in Zulu) and Natal Province were merged. It is locate ...
, South Africa. She was Head Girl at Carter High School in Pietermaritzburg and won awards for debating, drama, music and academics.
In 1996, Ford went to Rhodes University
Rhodes University is a public university, public research university located in Makhanda, Eastern Cape, Makhanda (Grahamstown) in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa. It is one of four universities in the province. Established in 1904, ...
to study a four-year Bachelor of Journalism degree majoring in communication design.[ During her time at Rhodes, Ford was arts and culture editor for the Rhodes student newspaper, ''Activate'', and performed in numerous plays and dance dramas. She co-wrote and starred in the ]National Arts Festival
The National Arts Festival (NAF) is an annual festival of performing arts in Grahamstown, South Africa. It is the largest arts festival on the African continent and one of the largest performing arts festivals in the world by visitor numbers.
Th ...
Fringe Festival play: 'Sincerely, Colour' in 1997 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 Johannesburg
Johannesburg ( , , ; Zulu and xh, eGoli ), colloquially known as Jozi, Joburg, or "The City of Gold", is the largest city in South Africa, classified as a megacity, and is one of the 100 largest urban areas in the world. According to Demo ...
-based non-profit, the Electoral Institute of Southern Africa The Electoral Institute for Sustainable Democracy in Africa (former Electoral Institute of Southern Africa), or EISA, is an organization founded in 1996 in Johannesburg to "promote credible elections, participatory democracy, human rights culture an ...
from 2000 to 2002, she went to the United Kingdom to work with the Association for Progressive Communications
The Association for Progressive Communications (APC) is an international network of organizations that was founded in 1990 to provide communication infrastructure, including Internet-based applications, to groups and individuals who work for peace ...
,[ ]GreenNet
GreenNet is a not-for-profit Internet service provider based in London, England. It was established in 1985 "as an effective and cheap way for environmental activists to communicate". In 1987 the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust gave GreenNet a g ...
[ and ]Privacy International
Privacy International (PI) is a UK-based registered charity that defends and promotes the right to privacy across the world. First formed in 1990, registered as a non-profit company in 2002 and as a charity in 2012, PI is based in London. Its cu ...
on Internet rights advocacy in Europe.
In 2003, she received a scholarship from Benetech
Benetech is a nonprofit social enterprise organization that empowers communities with software for social good. Previous projects include the Route 66 Literacy Project, the Miradi environmental project management software, Martus (human rights abu ...
to attend Stanford University
Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...
as a fellow in the Reuters Digital Vision Program
Reuters Digital Vision Program (RDVP) was an academic program.
History
RDVP was funded by the Reuters Foundation and encouraged innovative applications of computing and communications in the developing world. Located at Stanford University's ...
.[ Volunteering for ]Creative Commons
Creative Commons (CC) is an American non-profit organization and international network devoted to educational access and expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has release ...
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[ 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
The University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg (), is a multi-campus South African Public university, public research university situated in the northern areas of central Johannesburg. It is more commonly known as Wits University or Wits ( o ...
.[ During 2006 Heather co-founded The African Commons Project, a South African non-profit organisation working on the commons in Africa.][
]
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. She said in 2010 that Creative Commons and Wikipedia are not inclusive enough for the developing world.[
Ford was previously a member of the advisory board of the ]Wikimedia Foundation
The Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., or Wikimedia for short and abbreviated as WMF, is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization headquartered in San Francisco, California and registered as a charitable foundation under local laws. Best kno ...
and earned a master's degree at the University of California, Berkeley School of Information
The University of California, Berkeley, School of Information, also known as the UC Berkeley School of Information or the I School, is a graduate school and, created in 1994, the newest of the schools at the University of California, Berkele ...
. She has blogged at Thoughtleader and Global Voices, and has been a guest on Reuben Goldberg's 'The Internet Economy'. In 2011, IT News Africa named Ford one of Africa's 10 most influential women in science and tech.
Ford worked as a digital ethnographer
Ethnography (from Greek ''ethnos'' "folk, people, nation" and ''grapho'' "I write") is a branch of anthropology and the systematic study of individual cultures. Ethnography explores cultural phenomena from the point of view of the subject o ...
at Ushahidi
Ushahidi is an open source software application which utilises user-generated reports to collate and map data. It uses the concept of crowdsourcing serving as an initial model for what has been coined as "activist mapping" - the combination o ...
until October 2012 when she began studying for her DPhil
A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is a ...
at the Oxford Internet Institute
The Oxford Internet Institute (OII) is a multi-disciplinary department of social and computer science dedicated to the study of information, communication, and technology, and is part of the Social Sciences Division of the University of Oxford ...
, University of Oxford
, mottoeng = The Lord is my light
, established =
, endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019)
, budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20)
, chancellor ...
. She gained her PhD from Oxford with her thesis ''Fact factories: Wikipedia and the power to represent''. Since then, she has worked with the Wikimedia Foundation, investigating questions such as the nature of power within Wikipedia. She is a fellow in digital methods at the University of Leeds. She spent ten years studying the editing of the Wikipedia article 2011 Egyptian revolution
The 2011 Egyptian revolution, also known as the 25 January revolution ( ar, ثورة ٢٥ يناير; ), began on 25 January 2011 and spread across Egypt. The date was set by various youth groups to coincide with the annual Egyptian "Police ho ...
, releasing the book ''Writing the Revolution'' in 2022.
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
Reuters Digital Vision Program (RDVP) was an academic program.
History
RDVP was funded by the Reuters Foundation and encouraged innovative applications of computing and communications in the developing world. Located at Stanford University's ...
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
*
References
External links
* iCommon
"People"
Heather Ford's blog
*
"Africa and the Digital Information Commons: An Overview"
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
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ford, Heather
Living people
Free speech activists
Copyright activists
South African activists
South African women activists
South African educators
South African women
University of the Witwatersrand alumni
Rhodes University alumni
Wikimedia Foundation Advisory Board members
1978 births
University of California, Berkeley School of Information alumni