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Booking tickets

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If you are a member of staff or student at the University of Edinburgh, you can book a place through the university Event Booking system here:

If you are a member of the public, sign up for each day at Eventbrite here:

and/or

About the Event

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The full Spy Week programme

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Edinburgh Spy Week is organised by the University of Edinburgh, the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, the National Library of Scotland, the Edinburgh Filmhouse, and Blackwell’s Bookshop.

The week begins with Dame Stella Rimington in Conversation with Prof Penny Fielding Date and time: Monday 11 April, 5.30pm-7pm Venue: 50 George Square Lecture Theatre
What roles have women played in spy fiction, and how do they compare to the realities of women’s role in the history of espionage? Dame Stella Rimington, the first female director general of MI5 and author of the acclaimed Liz Carlisle spy fiction series, will discuss the questions in conversation with Professor Penny Fielding, Grierson Chair of English at the University of Edinburgh.

The week concludes with: Writing Spy Lives (A Panel Discussion with Jeremy Duns and Ben MacIntyre) Date and time: Friday 15 April, 5.30pm-7pm Venue: Project Room, 50 George Square
How to write the biography of a spy – a subject who, by profession, must often conceal a true identity and fabricate fake ones in the line of duty? What challenges and opportunities are there for biographers seeking to uncover the story of the lives of spies involved in secret, and politically sensitive, international affairs? These and other questions raised by writing spy lives will be explored by spy novelist and biographer Jeremy Duns (Dead Drop: The True Story of Oleg Penkovsky and the Cold War’s Most Dangerous Operation (2013)), and historian, journalist and biographer Ben MacIntyre (Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal (2014)).

For the full programme of Spy Week guest speakers and activities please click here: http://www.spyweek.llc.ed.ac.uk/
Most events (aside from the films) are free, but ticketed via Eventbrite (see the event pages on the above website).

Wikipedia editathon for Spy Week 2016: Women in Espionage and Spy Fiction

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For this particular event, the University of Edinburgh’s Information Services and Wikimedia UK are organising an editathon focused on Women in Espionage to celebrate Spy Week 2016 on 13-14 April 2016 near the other Spy Week venues in Teaching Studio LG.07, David Hume Tower Building, George Square, Edinburgh.Click here for Google Maps.

You can attend on one day or both days. Full training will be provided both days so new editors are very welcome to attend. If you have had Wikipedia training before, feel free to either start editing immediately on arrival or arriving a little later to skip the training portion of the afternoon. If you'd like to take part in the virtual event hosted by Women in Red. You can sign up here to participate.

This Wikimedia event forms part of Spy Week 2016 as a day of celebration which helps people learn about the achievements of women in espionage, inspiring others and creating new role models for young and old alike. Did you know that approximately only 16% of the biographies on Wikipedia relate to notable women? The aim of our editathon is to add to and improve the coverage of individuals, events and resources related to women in espionage.

Come along to learn about how Wikipedia works and contribute a greater understanding of the role of women in espionage!

Hitchcock secret agent

Participants

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Add your name here to the bottom of the page if you are planning to come along or participating remotely.

How do I prepare?

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Programme

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  • 2.00-2.10pm Registration, housekeeping
  • 2.10-2.15pm Introduction and welcome.
  • 2.15-3.00pm Wikipedia training.
  • 3pm-4.30pm Research, editing/creating the Wikipedia article.
  • 4.30pm-5.00pm Close.

(Refreshments available throughout the afternoon.)

Trainers

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Ewan McAndrew, Wikimedian in Residence at University of Edinburgh

On the day

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As mentioned, you will need your own laptop (or tablet) as desktop computers will not be provided in the teaching studio. A limited number of laptop computers can be borrowed from the university library so please contact me at ewan.mcandrew@ed.ac.uk if you would like to attend but would like to borrow a machine for the afternoon and I can direct you how to do this.

Hit list of articles to be created (and updated)

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Helpful updates could be as simple as: Making sure reference links are still appropriate and functional; Adding new inline citations/references; Adding a photo; Adding an infobox; Adding data to more fields in an existing infobox; Creating headings; Adding categories; etc.

The following is a small sample of topics and women to work on, with thanks to Megalibrarygirl for getting the ball rolling. Feel free to come up with your own ideas!

This is a list under development of missing articles on women who are (or have been) notable as spies or espionage. Some have been covered in the other wiki languages but many have not yet been covered anywhere on Wikipedia.

All are welcome to add names to the list which is intended to serve as a basis for creating new articles in this important but somewhat neglected sector on the English Wikipedia.

Chief Operator Grace Banker receiving the Distinguished Service Medal

United Kingdom

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United States

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  • Judith Coplon (1921-2011), alleged American spy for the Soviets
  • Ruth A. David former President and CEO, Analytic Services, Inc. (ANSER) and former Deputy Director for Science and Technology at the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. [6] [7] (Dr. Ruth A. David is already mentioned in many Wikipedia articles, such as [8] and [9] and [10], but she does not yet have a biographical article of her own.

Austrian

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Belgium

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Germany

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France

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Italy

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Netherlands

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Spain

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Switzerland

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Articles needing work

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HelloGirls
Lilian Rolfe
Noor Inayat Khan

Looking for ideas?

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These two Wikidata lists provide a starting point for where to look on Wikipedia for articles that could be created or improved. Italicised names on the list are pages that don't yet exist.

  1. Spies from the UK
  2. List of female spies and male spies (1800-2000)

Additional ideas can be found from the following Wikiproject pages & Category searches:

  1. Wikipedia:WikiProject_Women_in_Red/Spies
  2. Wikipedia:Requested_articles/Arts_and_entertainment/Literature
  3. WikiProject Women in Red
  4. Wikipedia:WikiProject_Women_writers/Missing_articles
  5. WikiProject Espionage
  6. Category:Female_wartime_spies
  7. Category:Stub-Class Women's History articles
  8. Category:Stub-Class Women writers articles
  9. Category:Female resistance members of World War II
  10. Category:People by intelligence agency
  11. Category:Special Operations Executive personnel

There's also an interesting list of literature on spies from the CIA which contains the names of both male and female authors.(With thanks to Ipigott for providing this link.)

Sources

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Physical resources which will be made available will include:

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  1. Sisterhood of spies : the women of the OSS / Elizabeth P. McIntosh.
  2. The Cicero spy affair : German access to British secrets in World War II / Richard Wires.
  3. The women who lived for danger : the women agents of SOE in the Second World War / Marcus Binney.
  4. The Amerasia spy case : prelude to McCarthyism / Harvey Klehr & Ronald Radosh.
  5. Gentleman spy : the life of Allen Dulles / Peter Grose.
  6. Intelligence studies in Britain and the US : historiography since 1945 / edited by Christopher R. Moran and Christopher J. Murphy Ebook version
  7. The hidden hand : Britain, America and Cold War secret intelligence / Richard J. Aldrich.
  8. The dangerous trade : spies, spymasters and making of Europe / edited by Daniel Szechi.
  9. British spy fiction and the end of empire / Sam Goodman.
  10. Early Cold War spies : the espionage trials that shaped American politics / John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr. Ebook version
  11. Spying on the world : the declassified documents of the Joint Intelligence Committee, 1936-2013 / [edited by] Richard J. Aldrich, Rory Cormac and Michael S. Goodman.
  12. Open secret : the autobiography of the former Director-General of MI5 / Stella Rimington.

Resources identified by our Liaison Librarians Angela Nicholson & Shenxiao Tong

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Books:

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  • Aubrac, L. (1994). Outwitting the Gestapo. Lincoln, Neb. ; London: University of Nebraska Press.
  • Pattinson, J., & University of Manchester. Centre for the Cultural History of War. (2007). Behind enemy lines : Gender, passing and the Special Operations Executive in the Second World War (Cultural history of modern war). Manchester: Manchester University Press.
  • Proctor, T. (2003). Female intelligence : Women and espionage in the First World War. New York ; London: New York University.
  • Wark, W. (1991). Spy fiction, spy films and real intelligence (CASS (Series). Studies in intelligence). London: Frank Cass.

(The books mentioned above will be brought along on the day.)

Suggested sources:

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General
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  • DiscoverEd to find books, ebooks, journals, ejournals and more.
News sources
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Theses databases
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Talkpage templates for articles

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  • If the woman was born before 1950 use: {{WikiProject Women's history}}
  • If the woman was born after 1950 use: {{WikiProject Women}}
  • Add to WikiProject Esponiage: {{WikiProject Espionage |class= |importance= }}
  • Add to WikiProject Military history:{{WPMILHIST|class= }}

Friendly Space Policy

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Please note that we have a friendly space policy and do not tolerate harassment of any attendees. Please notify the event organiser if you feel unsafe during the event.

Disability Access

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David Hume Tower: Guide to Access.pdf

Want to learn more about editing?

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If you want to learn more about editing before you come, try these introductions:
• Wikipedia:Tutorial
• Help:Editing - traditional wiki mark up help
• Wikipedia:VisualEditor/User guide - new Visual Editor help

Outcomes

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We Can Edit

Articles created

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  • Eileen Burgoyne - a Cold War Spy who worked for the British Government after the Second World War.
  • Jessie Jordan - a Scottish hairdresser who was found guilty of spying for the German Abwehr on the eve of World War II.
  • Rozanne Colchester - joined Bletchley Park as a decoder. Post war she held an undisclosed role with the Secret Intelligence Service. Serving in Cairo and Istanbul where she helped investigate the double agent Kim Philby.
  • Luisa Zeni - an Italian secret agent and writer.
  • Marie Meyer - an American linguist and spy who worked for the National Security Agency from 1943-60. She was assigned to the Venona project and is credited with making some of the first recoveries of the Venona codebook. She studied eight foreign languages and was the first person to receive the NSA's Meritorious Civilian Service Award.
  • Magda Fontanges - also known as Madeleine Coraboeuf, was a French actress, journalist and a spy for the Germany Secret Service between 1940 and 1943.
  • Ginette Jullian: a French spy during the Second World War, she trained for the SOE, learning parachuting, security, and wireless operation. Created as a remote contribution to this editathon. PamD 22:36, 14 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Sarah Helm - a British journalist and non-fiction writer. She worked for The Sunday Times and The Independent in the 1980s and 1990s. Her first book, A Life in Secrets detailing the life of the secret agent Vera Atkins, was published in 2005.
  • Melissa Boyle Mahle - a writer and former Central Intelligence Agency officer in the Middle East. Her books include Denial and Deception: An Insider’s View of the CIA from Iran-Contra to 9/11. She acted as a consultant for the film Salt.
  • Minnie M. Kenny - served as a cryptanalyst, educator and equal opportunity activist who worked at the National Security Agency.
  • Astrid Dövle Dollis Dahlgren - nicknamed the "Scandinavian 'Mata Hari'" was a Norwegian dentist and property dealer. After she became Swedish by marriage she worked for Nazi Germany during World War II.
  • Juliana Mickwitz - She was employed with the American military and later National Security Agency as a translator, linguist and cryptanalyst. She was inducted into the Cryptologic Hall of Honor in 2012.
  • Dorothy Blum - an American computer scientist and cryptanalyst. She wrote computer software for the NSA and spearheaded the effort to teach NSA employees to write cryptanalytic programs. She was using the Fortran programming language three years before its public release in 1957. Blum "significantly changed the way NSA did cryptanalysis". She was also elected one of the top 100 "most outstanding women in the federal government".
Dorothy T Blum 1924 1980
  • Josette Bruce - a French novelist of Polish origin. She is remembered for taking over the literary series OSS 117 about secret agent Hubert Bonisseur de La Bath after the death of her husband Jean Bruce, creator of the series.
  • Leslie Silbert - an American writer who has worked as a private investigator. In 2004, she published her first novel The Intelligience, a spy story based on an incident in the life of the British 16th-century author Christopher Marlowe.
  • Ruth A. David - an American electrical engineer. While at the CIA, David was responsible for encouraging the agency to pursue partnerships with the private sector and designed a proposal to procure technology at the stage of development from the private sector. She has been awarded the CIA Director's Award, the Defense Intelligence Agency Director's Award, the CIA Distinguished Intelligence Medal, the National Reconnaissance Officer's Award for Distinguished Service, and the National Security Agency Distinguished Service Medal.
  • Ruth Mitchell - a reporter who was the only American woman to serve with the Serbian anti-Axis Chetnik guerrillas under Draža Mihailović in World War II. She was captured by the Gestapo and spent a year as a prisoner of war, later writing a book about her experiences. She also wrote a book about one of her brothers, General Billy Mitchell, who is regarded as the founder of the U.S. Air Force.
  • Grace Banker - a telephone operator who served during World War I (1917-1918) as Chief Operator of telephones of the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) in the U.S. Army Signal Corps. She was the leader of 33 women telephone operators known popularly as Hello Girls who were assigned from New York to travel to France and work at the war front in Paris, Chaumont to operate the telephone switch boards at the First Army headquarters. About her work in the war front she said that "the secrecy surrounding their operations gave it an aura of romance and set it apart from the civilian work."

Articles improved

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  • Lilian Rolfe - an Allied secret agent in World War II.
  • Stella Rimington - a British author and former Director General of MI5, a position she held from 1992 to 1996. She was the first female DG of MI5, and the first DG whose name was publicised on appointment.
  • Lise de Baissac - a heroine of the Special Operations Executive during the Second World War, a special agent who risked her life running her own operations; she was awarded several gallantry awards after the war.
  • Kim Philby - a high-ranking member of British intelligence who worked as a double agent before defecting to the Soviet Union in 1963. He served as both an NKVD and KGB operative.
  • Pearl Witherington - a World War II Special Operations Executive agent. Given the code name "Marie", Witherington was dropped by parachute into occupied France in September 1943, where she joined Maurice Southgate, leader of the Stationer Network. Over the next eight months, she worked as Southgate's courier. After the Gestapo arrested Southgate in May 1944 who was subsequently deported to Buchenwald, she became leader of the new Wrestler Network, under a new code-name "Pauline". Her story has been cited as the inspiration for the Sebastian Faulks novel Charlotte Gray.
  • Charles Medhurst - a First World War Royal Flying Corps pilot on the Western Front and later a senior officer in the Royal Air Force (father of Rozanne Colchester).
  • Marie Christine Chilver also known by the codename Agent Fifi, was a British secret agent in World War II. Originally recruited after escaping the Nazis and helping a British airman return to England, she worked for the Special Operations Executive assessing and testing the security awareness of trainee secret agents.
  • Agent 355 - the code name of a female spy during the American Revolution, part of the Culper Ring. Agent 355 is one of the first spies for the United States, but her real identity is unknown. Agent 355 is thought to have played a major role in exposing Benedict Arnold and the arrest of Major John Andre.

See also

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Articles contributed under Women in Red's Women in Espionage--Ipigott (talk) 09:12, 16 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Sign Up Here!

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Prior to the event:

  1. RSVP: ewan.mcandrew@ed.ac.uk
  2. Do you have a Wikipedia User Name?
    No? Create a Wikipedia account
    Yes? Go to Step #3
  3. Sign up! Add your Wikipedia User Name to this section by clicking the blue button below (follow instructions). Your name will be added to the bottom of this page
Don't worry! If you haven't edited Wikipedia before and don't have a Wikipedia User Name yet, we will help you on the day of the event! And remember to have fun!
To sign up for this event: Log in or create an account.


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