The South African Centre for Digital Language Resources (SADiLaR) at the North-West University (NWU) recently hosted another successful DH-IGNITE regional event at the Premier Hotel OR Tambo in Kempton Park.

Staff and students from various universities and participants from the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research and the Human Sciences Research Council joined the three-day event.

Organised through ESCALATOR, a programme funded by SADiLaR, DH-IGNITE’s goal is to help catalyse digital innovation in humanities and social sciences research in South Africa, and share what is currently happening in the South African humanities and social sciences landscape.

Participants enjoyed two days of presentations, discussions, lightning talks and interactive sessions, and a third day of in-person workshops. It was the perfect opportunity for them to showcase their work, meet peers at similar learning stages, establish new collaborations, advertise and explore postgraduate study opportunities, and brain storm ideas for digital innovation in their research projects.

Highlights from the programme include the lightning talks about South African data sources, resources and opportunities for learning and teaching digital and computational skills, and case studies of humanities and social sciences research projects with computational and digital elements. The expert panel discussion, chaired by SADiLaR’s Prof Menno van Zaanen, unpacked a vision for digital and computational research in humanities and social sciences. The panellists included Marissa Griesel (Unisa), Cobus Rademeyer (Sol Plaatje University), Mathabo Grace (University of Johannesburg), Prevendren Naidoo (Wits) and Lebona Mafisa (NWU).

On the final day of the conference, participants had the option of joining one of three workshops to put some of their newly acquired skills to test. The three topics were ”The first steps to text mining”, presented by Prof Van Zaanen; “An Introduction to working with digital texts (Voyant Tools)”, presented by SADiLaR digital humanities researchers Mmasibidi Setaka and Andiswa Bukula; and “Using computational tools for translating text (Autshumato)”, presented by UJ’s Laurinda van Tonder.

Passion and genuine interest

According to the participants, the event provided crucial information on the available tools and resources that will help to intellectualise South Africa’s indigenous languages.
They were also grateful for the interactive space in which many questions were being asked, thereby having the opportunity to really engage with speakers and immerse themselves in the various topics.

Register your interest for the next DH-IGNITE event

Registration for the next DH-IGNITE events (in the Eastern Cape and Northern region) is not open yet, but you can register your interest to participate and receive more information when it becomes available.