By day, the 52-year-old is a University of Otago editor of science papers. But, after hours, she creates Wikipedia profiles on notable New Zealand women.
In 2024, she achieved a remarkable feat by creating 367 new Wikipedia profiles — more than one a day.
Dr Braisher said she took on the mammoth task in response to the significant gender imbalance on the online encyclopedia website.
In 2014, it was revealed only 15.53% of biographies on the site were about women.
The international Women in Red Wikipedia project was launched as a result, with the aim of reducing this gap.
"It started as a hobby, and then because I was only working part-time, it grew into, you know, rather more.
"You could probably call it an obsession now."
She said her Wikipedia editing journey began back in 2018 with learning about what was considered notable on the site and identifying where there were gaps which really needed to be filled.
"From here, I began creating a list of notable New Zealand women who didn’t have Wikipedia articles.
"Over time, the list grew so long that I needed to set myself a target if I wanted to get the job done, which led to the challenge of creating one article every day."
She said it had been relatively easy to come up with lists of names of people to write profiles about.
"I started off doing things like looking at all of the female fellows of the Royal Society of New Zealand.
"So you sort of look for a notable list of people and knock those off, and then look for the next notable list.
"Working in academia, you tend to focus on that. I focused quite a lot on academics, because by the time you've reached full professor level at a university, you're generally notable enough by Wikipedia standards."
Dr Braisher said profile highlights included creating articles for Lisa Tumahi, the first female kaiwhakahaere (chairwoman) of Te Runanga o Ngāi Tahu; Ephra Garrett, the first Māori woman to be appointed to the faculty at Massey University; Dunedin broadcaster Catherine Saunders; Otago restaurateur Fleur Sullivan; RNZ producer Alison Ballance; and KidsCan Charitable Trust founder Dame Julie Chapman.
In December 2024, Dr Braisher was delighted the percentage of women's biographies on English Wikipedia had reached the milestone of 20%.
"I'm contributing to what is a very large effort over many years to increase the percentage, so it's great to be part of that ever-changing group of editors doing that.
"Obviously, my personal feeling is that it is highly likely that more than 20% of the notable people in the world are women, so the percentage ought to be higher.
"So I'll be continuing to be a part of that project. And it's not just women — it's other minorities as well who are underrepresented.
"There's lots of gaps and efforts to try and fill."
