User:Cljim22

I am a historian of British environmental history. I recently finished my PhD at York University in Toronto, Canada. I studied the environmental and social history of the Lower River Lea Valley and West Ham in the East of London. I'm currently embarking on a study of the global environmental history of industrial development in the Thames Estuary. I've been meaning to learn more about editing Wikipedia for a few years now, as I think academics should support this very important project. I'm going to start editing regularly this summer and blog about the experience on ActiveHistory.ca and NiCHE-Canada.org/otter. The biggest problem I foresee is that we can't introduce original research and should avoid over citing our own publications. This means academics need to focus mostly on the many topics they know well and read a lot about to support their own research and teaching activities. It might be harder, however, to convince myself, and fellow historians, find the motivation (and time) to contribute to Wikipedia on topics of secondary interest.