Free Knowledge Africa is pleased to announce the advisory board. The advisory board is made up of the following members: Carlos Iglesias, Larissa Borck, Susanna Ånäs, Douglas McCarthy and Sam Oyeyele.
Carlos Iglesias is a Senior Research Manager at the World Wide Web Foundation.Carlos is an active participant at several global communities related to Open Government, Open Data and the Web, such as the World Wide Web Consortium, the Open Knowledge Foundation, the World Bank community of expert consultants, the OGP Open Data working group or the ISA programme for interoperability solutions at the European level.
In addition to this, he has more than ten years of previous experience planning and developing research, consultancy, education and outreach projects devoted to help governments make better use of the Web and Internet in fields such as Open Government, Open Data, Web Accessibility, Mobile Web, Device Independence, W3C Standards and the Semantic Web.
Larissa Borck is a digital cultural heritage expert and cultural anthropologist. Her areas of expertise include Open GLAM (open access and licensing in the cultural heritage sector), reaching out to new audiences with the help of digital platforms, and digitisation of cultural heritage collections. After working for the Swedish National Heritage Board, she now works as a Curator focused on Digital Development at Sörmland Museum in Sweden.
Sam has been a part of the Wikimedia community since 2011, and he founded the AfroCine Project in March 2018. He is a founder member of Wikimedia User Group Nigeria and served as the Outreach Coordinator for the affiliate since its inception in 2015 until 2020. In this role, Sam has coordinated several editing workshops, contests, campaigns and partnerships in Nigeria, in order to improve awareness and broaden participation in the Open movement in the country and beyond.Sam has also helped coordinated several continental projects such as Wiki Loves Africa, Wiki Loves Women, and so on. He served as a member of the Ombudsman Commission from February 2018 to February 2020, and has actively participated in the different phases of the global Wikimedia 2030 Strategy; first as a discussion coordinator and then as a diversity working group member. Sam currently works with the Wikimedia Foundation as a facilitator for Movement Strategy and Governance.
Susanna Ånäs is a wikimedian and an advocate for Open Access to cultural heritage at AvoinGLAM Finland. She is interested in bringing microhistorical collections together with the cultural heritage preserved by institutions. She believes the open platforms, open collections and global collaboration between practitioners across sectors will help achieve that.
Douglas McCarthy is a digital cultural heritage and open access specialist, with two decades of experience in the museum sector. He is the co-founder and editor of the Medium publication Open GLAM, and the co-leader of the Open GLAM survey. At Europeana, Douglas and his team work with museums, archives and libraries to bring engaging collections and editorial content to online audiences. Using a range of digital storytelling formats, such as online exhibitions, creative remix contests and social media conversations, Europeana brings culture and historical collections to life.
We are sure that contributions, advise and support of the advisory board would help Free Knowledge Africa to bridge knowledge gaps on African topics and make them free and accessible.
