The Electronic Textual Cultures Lab (ETCL; etcl.uvic.ca) and the University of Victoria Libraries (uvic.ca/library) are proud to welcome Dr. Amanda Lawrence (RMIT University) as Honorary Resident Wikipedian for 2024–25.

Dr. Lawrence is Director of Australian Internet Observatory (internetobservatory.org.au), formerly Director of the award-winning public policy digital library the Analysis & Policy Observatory (apo.org.au), and the outgoing President of Wikimedia Australia (wikimedia.org.au). She is also an Affiliate at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making & Society (ADM+S; admscentre.org.au) based at RMIT University. Her research interests include open access and alternative publishing systems, Wikipedia and the Wikimedia ecosystem, public knowledge infrastructure, research communication, knowledge commons, digital platforms and libraries.

Dr. Lawrence has initiated and managed multiple Australian Research Council Linkage and Infrastructure grants and developed online platforms for projects in the creative industries and environment. She also developed online platforms for the ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation and the CRC for Low Carbon Living. An accomplished scholar, she has published numerous journal articles, reports, and briefings, and has presented widely in Australia and internationally. Dr. Lawrence received her PhD in Media and Communications and a Graduate Diploma in Library and Information Management from RMIT University, as well as an Arts Degree with Honors from the University of Melbourne.

The ETCL and UVic Libraries are pleased to host Dr. Lawrence as the 2024–25 Honorary Resident Wikipedian, a role that was previously held by Dr. Christian Vandendorpe from 2014–16, Dr. Constance Crompton from 2017–19, Dr. Erin Glass from 2019–20, Silvia Gutiérrez de la Torre from 2020–21, Nastasia Herold from 2021–22, and Dr. Amanda Madden from 2023–2024. This initiative is co-sponsored by the ETCL, UVic Libraries, the Implementing New Knowledge Environments Partnership (INKE; inke.ca), and the Federation of the Humanities and Social Sciences (federationhss.ca). Please direct any inquiries to the ETCL via Ray Siemens and to the UVic Libraries via Matt Hucalak.

On December the 3rd, 2024, Dr. Lawrence will deliver a keynote talk titled “Citizen Science, Research Infrastructure, and Very Large Online Platforms (VLOPs)” at the 6th gathering of the Canadian-Australian Partnership for Open Scholarship (CAPOS) event, Commons, Platforms, and Emerging Knowledge Frameworks. Dr. Lawrence will also be speaking in her role in 2025 – details to be announced in the new year.

Find out more about Dr. Lawrence:

Orcid: 0000-0003-2194-8178

Google scholar: scholar.google.com.au/citations?hl=en&pli=1&user=pj-hdTkAAAAJ

Linked in: linkedin.com/in/amanda-s-lawrence/