March 2026 - Corpora

[CfP] IEEE FedCSIS 2026: "Digital Humanities, Computational Social Sciences and Economics Research (AI-HuSo)"
by Jens Dörpinghaus 20 Mar '26

20 Mar '26

Dear all, I would like to inform you about a call for papers for a thematic track at FedCSIS 2026 (IEEE #61123) called "AI in Digital Humanities, Computational Social Sciences and Economics Research (AI-HuSo)". FedCSIS 2026 will be held in Riga, Latvia, 23-26 August, 2026. See https://2026.fedcsis.org/thematic/ai-huso for details. --> Paper submission: 15.04.2026 This thematic session is dedicated to the computational study of Social Sciences, Economics and Humanities, including all subjects like, for example, education, labour market, history, religious studies, theology, cultural heritage, and informative predictions for decision-making and behavioural-science perspectives. While digital methods, intelligence systems, and AI have been emerging topics in these fields for several decades, this thematic session is not only limited to discoveries in these domains, but also dedicated to the reflections of these methods and results within the field of computer science. Thus, we are in particular interested in interdisciplinary exchange and dissemination with a clear focus on computational and AI methods for intelligence systems. Since there is a clear methodological overlap between these three domains and often similar algorithms and AI approaches are considered, we see this thematic session as place for interdisciplinary learning, discussing a joint toolbox as a support for scholars from these field with human and context-aware agents. The aim of this thematic session is thus to bridge the gap between scientific domains, foster interdisciplinary exchange and discuss how research questions from other domains challenge current computer science. In particular, we are interested in communications between researchers from different fields of computer science, social sciences, economics, humanities, and practitioners from different fields. Topics ====== The list of topics includes, but is not limited to: - AI and computational approaches for the interdisciplinary work of the social sciences, economics, and humanities: report on theoretical, methodological, experimental, and applied research. - AI and computational approaches for linking data from different digital resources, including online social networks, web and data mining, Knowledge Graphs, Ontologies. - AI and computational methods for text mining and textual analysis, for example texts within social sciences, digital literary studies, computational stylistics and stylometry. - Text encoding, computational linguistics, annotation guidelines, OCR for humanities, economics, and social sciences. - Network analysis, including social and historical network analysis. - Ethical and philosophical considerations of AI in society, education and humanties research In general, the applications of interest are included in the list below, but are not limited to: - Labour market research and qualification, including behavioral-science perspectives. - Education: Digital methods and systems, e-learning, adult education, etc. - Contributions to the application of technology to culture, history, and societal issues: For example, computational text analysis, analytical and visualization, databases, etc. - In particular, we welcome submissions which focus on a critical reflection of digital methods in the humanities, economics and social sciences within computer science. - Linking of digital resources, a discussion of data sets, their quality and reliability, combining quantitative and qualitative data, anonymization and data protection. Contact: ai-huso(a)fedcsis.org Submission rules ================ - Authors should submit their papers as Postscript, PDF or MSWord files. - The total length of a paper should not exceed 12 pages IEEE style (including tables, figures and references). More pages can be added, for an additional fee. IEEE style templates are available here. - Papers will be refereed and accepted on the basis of their scientific merit and relevance to the Topical Area. - Preprints containing accepted papers will be published online. - Only papers presented at the conference will be published in Conference Proceedings and submitted for inclusion in the IEEE Xplore® database. - Conference proceedings will be published in a volume with ISBN, ISSN and DOI numbers and posted at the conference WWW site. - Conference proceedings will be submitted for indexation according to information here. - Organizers reserve right to move accepted papers between FedCSIS Sessions.

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[CfP] 4th Workshop on Digitalization and AI for Society, in Education and Educational Research (DAI-EaR’26)
by Jens Dörpinghaus 20 Mar '26

20 Mar '26

Dear all, I would like to inform you about a call for papers for a workshop at INFORMATIK FESTIVAL 2026 in Dresden, 22.09. – 25.09.2026: 4th Workshop on Digitalization and AI for Society, in Education and Educational Research (DAI-EaR’26) Submission Deadline: 07.05.2026 See https://wp.uni-koblenz.de/cssbibb/4th-workshop-on-digitalization-and-ai-for… for details. Aims & Scope ============ Societies today have to deal with multifaceted risks such as pandemics, geopolitical tensions, and virtual security risks. At the nexus of these risks computational social sciences, computing education and digital literacy are emerging as a critical political and societal lever for designing digitalized futures. In pursuit of an open society, open science and open source, this workshop addresses the transformative power of computational methods, including AI, not only in education, but also in society and labor markets by exploring interdisciplinary insights to questions of digital and open sovereignity, societal structures, and the evolving demands of labor markets. Call for Papers =============== This workshop aims to comprehensively explore the intersection of computer science, computational methods, education research, sociological research, their respective methods and societal implications, with a special focus on digitalization and AI for and in society, education and educational research. It focuses on interdisciplinary perspectives on the design of an open society, open science and open source, examining aspects such as society, general education, labor markets, qualifications, vocational education and training, or adult education. In addition, the workshop encourages submissions that critically reflect on the application of digital methods in these research areas. The overarching goal is to understand how computational methods, especially AI, can be sensibly applied in the development of open, digital and sustainable societies and economies. Emphasis is placed on theoretical as well as empirical research, including data science methods and AI approaches applicable to recommender systems, digitized learning, and effective linking of digital resources. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to: - Computational Social Sciences, in particular AI and computational approaches for the interdisciplinary work of the social sciences, economics, and humanities: report on theoretical, methodological, experimental, and applied research. - Quantitative and qualitative research - Data science methods to analyse (vocational) education and labour market data - Digital methods and systems in education (e-learning, adult education, general, VET and academic education, etc.) - AI approaches for recommender systems and digitized learning - Linking of digital resources, a discussion of data sets, their quality and reliability, combining quantitative and qualitative data, anonymization and data protection. AI and computational methods for text mining and textual analysis, for example texts within social sciences, digital literary studies, computational stylistics and stylometry. - Network analysis, including social and educational network analysis. - We also welcome submissions focusing on a critical reflection of digital methods in labour market research, education and other research areas. Submission ========== The workshop will consist of paper and poster presentations. Selected papers will be published in “GI-Edition: Lecture Notes in Informatics” (LNI). Submissions (6-16 pages for full paper, 3-6 pages plus references for poster presentation) must be written in English and follow the guidelines published at https://informatik2026.converve.io/ and https://gi.de/service/publikationen/lni. Please submit your papers to https://www.conftool.org/informatik2026/index.php?page=login Submissions are reviewed using a single-blind review process, which means you do not have to hide authors’ names and affiliations. Important Dates: 07.05.2026 – Submission Deadline 01.06.2026 – Notification 01.07.2026 – Deadline Proceedings/Full Paper Submission – Submission of camera-ready papers. 31.07.2026 – Publication of agenda.

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Postdoctoral position: Autonomous Agents in Distributed Ledger Technologies
by Damir Korenčić 20 Mar '26

20 Mar '26

Institution: Ruđer Bošković Institute, Zagreb, Croatia Closing date: April 10th 2026 We recently opened a position of potential interest for NLP researchers. We are looking for a motivated candidate with relevant technical expertise and compatible scientific interest. The successful candidate will work in a group consisting of two senior researchers and a PhD student. The focus of the project is twofold: 1) researching how autonomous agents operate on DLT platforms, and 2) developing and deploying a long-running agents to interact with DLT platforms and social networks. The first part encompasses collection and analysis of relevant DLT data, while the second part will focus on development and deployment of an LLM-based agentic system, and on studying its behavior and patterns of interaction. Initially, we plan to focus on Farcaster as the target platform. The candidate will be welcome (and expected) to actively participate in the design of the research. How to apply: https://euraxess.ec.europa.eu/jobs/418300 (basically you need to send a cover letter, plus the other information described as required). If you have any questions, feel free to contact us at: matija.piskorec(a)irb.hr damir.korencic(a)irb.hr

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CODI CRAC 2026 Workshop - deadline extended - April 3
by Amir.Zeldes＠georgetown.edu 20 Mar '26

20 Mar '26

*apologies for cross-postings* � DEADLINE EXTENDED: *April 3* � Joint CODI CRAC 2026 Workshop � July 2026 - ACL 2026 - San Diego, USA � We are pleased to announce that we are organizing the second joint CODI-CRAC workshop which will be held during ACL 2026! More information at: � <https://sites.google.com/view/codi-crac2026/home> https://sites.google.com/view/codi-crac2026/ � � CODI-CRAC is officially endorsed by SIGDial, the ACL Special Interest Group on Discourse and Dialogue. � Deadline for CODI CRAC papers: April 3 2026 � The workshop will also host the CRAC shared task. More information at: � - CRAC shared task: <https://ufal.mff.cuni.cz/corefud/crac26> https://ufal.mff.cuni.cz/corefud/crac26 Aims and scope � Recent breakthroughs in NLP and Large Language Models have dramatically expanded our systems’ abilities to interpret and generate not just sentences, but whole documents and conversations. This shift has renewed interest in discourse-level challenges, driving new work on inter-sentential phenomena, coherence modeling, long-form summarization, discourse-aware representation learning, and large-scale resources for discourse understanding and parsing. � Discourse sits at the intersection of many NLP subfields, as it is where context, structure, and meaning come together beyond single sentences. Discourse shapes how we capture coherence, cohesion, and inference across long texts, and brings together researchers tackling the shared challenges of document structure, long-range dependencies, and the requirements of extended context. � In 2025, we organized the first joint CODI-CRAC workshop. The CODI workshop on Computational Approaches to Discourse has been a forum for a broad range of work at the discourse level. The CRAC workshop on Computational Models of Reference, Anaphora and Coreference has been a primary venue for researchers interested in the computational modeling of reference phenomena. Together, these workshops have catalyzed work to advance research on discourse-level problems and have served as a forum for discussing suitable datasets and reliable evaluation methods. � This joint edition corresponds to the 7th CODI workshop and the 9th CRAC workshop. It will welcome contributions from all the areas below, including state-of-the-art textual NLU and NLG work using LLMs, as well as classic structured work on automatic discourse analysis -- corresponding to challenging tasks such as coreference resolution or discourse parsing -- to encourage interaction between communities. The workshop is set to host the 5th edition of the CRAC shared task on Multilingual Coreference Resolution. � The workshop is planned as a 1-day event that brings together different subcommunities. It will feature regular papers and invited talks by Ruihong Huang (Texas A&M University) and Philippe Laban (Microsoft Research). We also accept papers accepted at other major conferences for non-archival presentation, including Findings papers. � Topics of interest � We welcome papers on symbolic and probabilistic approaches, corpus development and analysis, as well as machine and deep learning approaches to discourse. We appreciate theoretical contributions as well as practical applications, including demos of systems and tools. The goal of the workshop is to provide a forum for the community of NLP researchers working on all aspects of discourse. � Topics of interest include, but are not limited to: � - discourse structure - discourse connectives - discourse relations - annotation tools and schemes for discourse phenomena - corpora annotated with discourse phenomena - discourse parsing - cross-lingual discourse processing - cross-domain discourse processing - anaphora and coreference resolution - event coreference - argument mining - coherence modeling - discourse and semantics - discourse in applications such as machine translation, summarization, etc. - evaluation methodology for discourse processing - discourse pretraining tasks - long-text modeling and generation � Submissions Double submission of papers is allowed, but this information will need to be disclosed at submission time. � We solicit three categories of papers: � * (1) Regular workshop papers � * (2) Demos * (3) Extended abstracts Only regular workshop papers and demos will be included in the proceedings as archival publications. Extended abstracts are non-archival and will be included in the workshop program and handbook, but will not appear in the workshop proceedings. 1- Regular papers must describe original unpublished research. � * Long papers may consist of up to 8 pages of content, plus unlimited pages for references. * Short papers can be up to 4 pages, plus unlimited pages for references. 2- Demo submissions may describe systems, tools, visualizations, etc., and may consist of up to 4 pages, plus unlimited pages for references. 3- Extended abstracts can describe work in progress. They may be two pages long (without references). Extended abstracts are non-archival. They will be included in the workshop program and handbook, but will not appear in the workshop proceedings. Each submission can contain unlimited pages for Appendices, but the paper submissions need to remain fully self-contained, as these supplementary materials are completely optional, and reviewers are not even asked to review them. Final versions of all types of papers will be given one additional page of content. Paper accepted or rejected at one of the main conferences � We also invite presentations of papers accepted at another main conference. They will be included in the workshop program and handbook, but will not appear in the workshop proceedings. We also fast-track ARR papers with existing reviews. Submission website � All submissions must be anonymous and follow the ACL 2026 formatting instructions described here: <https://aclrollingreview.org/cfp> https://aclrollingreview.org/cfp � � Submission website: * CODI-CRAC: <https://softconf.com/acl2026/codi-crac2026/> https://softconf.com/acl2026/codi-crac2026/ � Schedule Important dates for the workshop are listed below: � * CODI-CRAC papers due: April 3 * Pre-reviewed ARR fast-track (with reviews, can be accepted or rejected): April 5 � * Notification of acceptance: May 11, 2026 * Grant application: May 5, 2026 * Camera-ready paper due: May 19, 2026 * Pre-recorded video due: June 4, 2026 * Workshop dates: July 4, 2026 � �All deadlines are 11.59 pm UTC -12h ("anywhere on Earth"). Invited Speakers � - Ruihong Huang, Texas A&M University - Philippe Laban, Microsoft Research Organizers � - Chloé Braud, CNRS-IRIT - Christian Hardmeier, IT University of Copenhagen - Chuyuan (Lisa) Li, � University of British Columbia - Jessy Li, University of Texas, Austin - Sharid Loáiciga, University of Gothenburg - Vincent Ng, University of Texas at Dallas - Michal Novák, Charles University, Prague - Maciej Ogrodniczuk, Institute of Computer Science, Polish Academy of Sciences - Massimo Poesio, Queen Mary University of London and University of Utrecht - Michael Strube, Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Studies - Amir Zeldes, Georgetown University, Washington DC � To contact the organizers, please send an email to: <mailto:codi-crac-workshop@googlegroups.com> codi-crac-workshop(a)googlegroups.com � � � �

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3rd Disciplinary Literacy Symposium
by David Beauchamp 19 Mar '26

19 Mar '26

Dear Corpus Linguists, The following event may be of interest to those who are engaged in corpus-based research and practice for educational purposes. The University of Bath's 3rd Disciplinary Literacy Symposium will be taking place on 17th and 18th June 2026. This two-day event hosted by the University's BAWESS corpus project<https://www.bath.ac.uk/projects/disciplinary-literacy-corpus-based-pedagogy…> team brings together some of the leading educational specialists, linguists and academics, who will present research and lead hands-on workshops in the areas of: * Disciplinary knowledge and literacy * Genres and genre-based pedagogy * Cross-disciplinary collaboration * Teacher/researcher collaboration * Corpus-based pedagogy * Data-driven Learning Registration is now open: Third Disciplinary Literacy Symposium<https://www.bath.ac.uk/events/third-disciplinary-literacy-symposium/> Disciplinary literacy, encompassing the specialised ways of reading, writing, and communicating knowledge within distinct academic disciplines, has emerged as a critical focus in education worldwide as educators and learners face the challenge of mastering subject-specific literacies in a wide range of curriculum areas, sometimes in more than one language. The event is designed to be of particular interest to secondary school teachers, and promises excellent opportunities for discussion, knowledge exchange, professional development and networking. This is a two-day in-person event with refreshments provided. Dr David Beauchamp Research assistant BAWESS team University of Bath Queen's Award for Enterprise International Trade 2022 Ranked in the top 50% of UK universities for research power Times Higher Education analysis of REF 2021 Rated Gold Overall Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) 2023 5 QS Stars Overall (Excellent) QS Stars University Rankings NOTICE This message and any files transmitted with it is intended for the addressee only and may contain information that is confidential or privileged. Unauthorised use is strictly prohibited. If you are not the addressee, you should not read, copy, disclose or otherwise use this message, except for the purpose of delivery to the addressee. Any views or opinions expressed within this e-mail are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of Coventry University.

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Call for participation - Low-Resource Indic Language Translation (INDIC MT) @ WMT2026
by Dr. Partha Pakray 19 Mar '26

19 Mar '26

Dear All, We are pleased to inform you that we are hosting the "*Shared Task on Low-Resource Indic Language Translation*" again this year as part of the Workshop on Machine Translation (WMT 2026). Following the outstanding success and enthusiastic participation witnessed in the previous year's edition (INDIC MT Task - WMT 2025, WMT 2024 and WMT 2023), we are excited to continue this important initiative, especially in North Eastern Languages. Despite recent advancements in machine translation (MT), such as multilingual translation and transfer learning techniques, the scarcity of parallel data remains a significant challenge, particularly for low-resource languages. The WMT 2026 Indic Machine Translation Shared Task aims to address this challenge by focusing on low-resource Indic languages from diverse language families. Specifically, we are targeting languages such as *Assamese, Mizo, Khasi, Manipuri, Nyishi, Bodo, and Kokborok*. In addition, WMT 2026 introduces three new languages to the shared task: *Karbi, Tagin, Nagamese and Mishing*. Additionally, you can find more details and updates on the task through the following link: Task Link: https://www2.statmt.org/wmt26/indic-mt-task.html. We highly encourage participants to register in advance so that we can provide updates regarding the release dates of data and other relevant information periodically To register for the event, please fill out the registration form available here: Link: https://forms.gle/VfADz8BA3sASbNqu5 For inquiries and further information, please contact us at lrilt.wmt(a)gmail.com. Thanks & Regards, Dr. Partha Pakray *WMT - Indic Task Organizers, 2026*

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ACM ICMI 2026 Tutorials
by Gualtiero Volpe 19 Mar '26

19 Mar '26

ICMI 2026 CALL FOR TUTORIALS ============================================ 5-9 October 2026, Napoli - Italy https://icmi.acm.org/2026/ ============================================ ACM ICMI 2026 will host half-day tutorials on context and cultural awareness for multimodal interaction, as well as on emerging topics within the scopes of multimodal AI and social interaction. A formal call for tutorial proposals will be issued soon, but for the first time, we invite the community to indicate which tutorial topics they would most like to see. This will help prospective proposers understand what the community considers most relevant. Please complete this short form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScQfyR6rHijr25CCBUP5tA4LhgEC4IoBfN… Prospective organizers are also encouraged to contact the co-chairs, Prof. Marco Cristani and Prof. Tsvi Kuflik (icmi2026-tutorials-chairs(a)acm.org), if they have any questions.

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CfP KlarText 2026 - Workshop on German Text Simplification & Readability Assessment @ KONVENS
by Stodden, Regina 18 Mar '26

18 Mar '26

CFP: KlarText 2026 �C Workshop on German Text Simplification & Readability Assessment<https://klar-text.github.io/> Co-located with KONVENS 2026<https://konvens2026.uni-hamburg.de/> (14�C17 Sept 2026 in Hamburg) The KlarText Workshop aims to bring together researchers, practitioners, and industry experts to discuss state-of-the-art methods, share resources, and identify future research directions in German text simplification and readability assessment. We especially want to raise awareness of different simplification goals and simplified language forms and attract researchers working on the challenges of German text simplification. Moreover, evaluating text simplification and readability poses challenges, such as the subjective nature of readability, difficulties in assessing cognitive load across different audiences, and the need for large, diverse datasets that reflect the complexity of real-world language use. The KlarText Workshop provides a dedicated venue for interdisciplinary collaboration, bridging NLP, computational linguistics, and cognitive science while also addressing these challenges and exploring regulatory frameworks for public communication. Additionally, we invite cross-linguistic perspectives that examine how insights from German or other languages can inform multilingual and cross-lingual simplification efforts, especially for Easy Language variants in other languages, such as lectura f��cil in Spanish, facile �� lire et �� comprendre (FALC) in French, or Viegl�� valoda in Latvian. We invite submissions on a broad range of topics, including - German Text Simplification - Readability Assessment - Resources & Approaches for Easy Language - Evaluation & Human-Centered Assessment - Applications & Real-World Impact - Cross-Linguistic & Multilingual Perspectives - Corpus analysis and non-computational approaches - Personalized simplification solutions - Multimodal solutions for accessible communication Important dates: Important Dates 2 July 2026, 23:59 AoE Direct paper submission deadline 26 July 2026, 23:59 AoE Submission deadline for pre-reviewed papers (ARR March/May 2026 cycle or KONVENS submissions) 4 August 2026 Notification of acceptance 15 August 2026 Deadline for camera-ready paper Organizers - Miriam Ansch��tz (Technical University of Munich, Germany) - Yingqiang Gao (University of Zurich, Switzerland) - Thorben Schomacker (HAW Hamburg & University of Hamburg, Germany) - Regina Stodden (University of Bielefeld, Germany) For more information, please visit the workshop page: https://klar-text.github.io/ Best regards, Regina Stodden, on behalf of the KlarText 2026 organizers

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PhD position in NLP & Information Extraction at HHU Düsseldorf
by Stefan Dietze 18 Mar '26

18 Mar '26

Starting from May 2026, the Data & Knowledge Engineering group at the Computer Science department at Heinrich-Heine-University Düsseldorf (https://www.cs.hhu.de/lehrstuehle-und-arbeitsgruppen/data-knowledge-enginee…), affiliated with the Heine Center for Artificial Intelligence and Data Science (HeiCAD) (https://www.heicad.hhu.de/) is looking for a *PhD student– Information Extraction & Natural Language Processing* (Salary group 13 TV-L, working time 100%, initially limited to 36 months with the possibility of further extension) In the context of the research project "WIEGE", we will investigate the spread of claims and political narratives across different social media platforms in an interdisciplinary consortium involving researchers from Communication Science, Computational Social Science and Computer Science. Our research will be concerned with novel Natural Language Processing (NLP) methods for the detection, linking and classification of claims and narratives in online discourse data. Challenges arise from the heterogeneous nature of different data sources, therefore the development of generalizable approaches will be a key focus. The PhD student will work in close collaboration with our project partners from Communication Science, benefitting from their tailored expert annotations and, vice-versa, aiding their annotation efforts by providing semi-automatic labeling approaches. Another task will entail the modeling and publishing of generated data according to Semantic Web principles. Your tasks will be: ******************* * Research in fields such as NLP, Machine Learning, Language Modeling and Representation learning, specifically with the aim to extract structured information from online discourse data * Develop NLP methods for (i) the detection and classification of claims and narratives on social media, and (ii) linking related claims and narratives within and across data sources; further (iii) assist semi-automated data annotations and (iv) model and publish data according to Semantic Web standards * Writing, publishing and presenting project results * Collaboration with team members and project partners in an interdisciplinary consortium Your profile: ************** * University degree (diploma/MSc) in Computer Science, Computational Linguistics or related fields * Research interests in NLP, machine learning, data mining, large language models, Semantic Web * Hands-on experience with Python, including knowledge of ML-Frameworks such as TensorFlow and PyTorch * Ability to communicate fluently in English (mandatory), good knowledge of the German language (desirable) What we offer: *************** * Flexible working hours and home office arrangements * A fast growing and international working environment with a lot of creative scientific freedom * Access to unique research data, (social) web archives and behavioral data * Support of collaborations with international research labs and experts The PhD research will be supervised by Prof. Dr. Stefan Dietze (Professor for Data & Knowledge Engineering at HHU and Scientific Director of KTS at GESIS - Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences, Cologne), mentored by Dr. Katarina Boland (Postdoctoral Researcher at Data & Knowledge Engineering and HeiCAD). For further information please contact Stefan Dietze (stefan.dietze(a)hhu.de) and/or Katarina Boland (katarina.boland(a)hhu.de). Interested? ************* Please apply by sending your complete application documents as a single PDF file to katarina.boland(a)hhu.de by 01 April 2026. -- Prof. Dr. Stefan Dietze Scientific Director Knowledge Technologies for the Social Sciences GESIS - Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences Web: https://www.gesis.org/en/kts Chair of Data & Knowledge Engineering Heinrich-Heine-University Düsseldorf Web: https://www.cs.hhu.de/en/research-groups/data-knowledge-engineering Phone: +49 (0)221-47694-421 Web: http://stefandietze.net

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CfP Digital Humanities and Artificial Intelligence in African Studies workshop, Stellenbosch, South Africa
by Menno Van Zaanen 18 Mar '26

18 Mar '26

═══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════ ═ CALL FOR PAPERS ═══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════ ═ A DFG Programme Point Sud Workshop Digital Humanities and Artificial Intelligence in African Studies: Towards Sustainable and Equitable Practices 21–24 September 2026 · STIAS, Stellenbosch, South Africa ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── ABOUT THE WORKSHOP The integration of digital humanities (DH) and artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming the production of knowledge in African Studies, offering new opportunities for innovative analysis, dynamic visualisation and cross-cultural research. Yet this shift raises urgent questions regarding equitable access, the representation of African languages, and the suitability of methodologies. Current large language models underrepresent African languages, digital scholarly infrastructures remain optimised for English, and digitisation pipelines that produce AI-ready data are themselves shaped by political choices about what to digitise, how to describe it, and who controls access. While recent initiatives on digital sovereignty in Africa have centred on policy and regulation, this workshop shifts attention to methodological practice. It asks how DH methods and AI transform research in African Studies, and how we can design, evaluate, and sustain these methods under African conditions. By bringing together scholars, independent researchers and practitioners from Africa, Europe, and beyond, the event will foster North–South and South–South dialogue at the intersection of African epistemologies and digital methods, moving from description to design. ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── CONVENORS - Frédérick Madore, University of Bayreuth - Vincent Hiribarren, King's College London - Emmanuel Ngue Um, University of Yaoundé 1 - Menno van Zaanen, South African Centre for Digital Language Resources (SADiLaR) ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── THEMATIC AXES The programme is structured around the following thematic axes: 1. Transforming Research Methods through AI and Digital Tools in African Studies This axis asks a fundamental question: how are AI and DH methods changing the study of African cultures, languages, and histories? Participants will present concrete uses of AI to analyse multilingual texts, employ computer vision to study visual culture and historical artefacts, and develop digital mapping to trace cultural movements and connections. We will evaluate what works for different kinds of African cultural materials, identify adaptations required for local contexts, and specify where computational approaches can complement—rather than replace—interpretive scholarship. The goal is clear: practical guidance for integrating these methods while preserving the interpretive richness that defines the humanities. 2. Building Sustainable Research Infrastructures from African Perspectives Moving beyond policy discourse, this axis asks what it takes to build and sustain digital research capacity within African institutions and communities. We will examine practical obstacles—limited connectivity, unstable funding, and scarce training data for local languages—and showcase South–South collaboration models that have navigated these constraints. Participants will share strategies for developing tools that utilise available resources rather than assuming high-end infrastructure. Key questions include how to keep research outputs accessible to the communities being studied, how to train the next generation of African DH scholars, and how to secure sustainable funding that does not depend solely on institutions in the Global North. The focus is on concrete, scalable approaches to durable capacity. 3. Centring African Knowledge Systems in Digital Research Design This axis poses a methodological challenge: how can digital research tools respect and incorporate African ways of knowing? Rather than retrofitting existing techniques to African materials, we explore how African epistemologies can shape the tools themselves. Case studies will show community knowledge informing database structures, oral traditions testing text-centred analytical frameworks, and local classification systems improving standard metadata schemas. We will consider protocols for culturally sensitive materials, interface design that does not privilege European languages, and criteria to ensure that AI systems trained on African data primarily serve African research needs. Here, decolonisation moves from critique to construction. ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── WORKSHOP FORMAT & LANGUAGE POLICY The workshop will run in a hybrid format to maximise participation and impact. In-person sessions at STIAS will be paired with remote access via Zoom for those unable to travel. Participants will pre-circulate draft papers in English or French one month in advance, each with a bilingual abstract to support preparation. To address language barriers, the workshop will operate bilingually in English and French. Presenters may speak in either language; where possible, a bilingual chair will moderate discussion and provide brief consecutive interpretation where needed. Recent advances in AI speech recognition and machine translation now enable near-real-time captioning; we will deploy these tools in the room and on Zoom. All presenters will supply slides with bilingual titles and key terms, and a one-page terminology handout in both languages. Together, these measures encourage meaningful participation in Africa’s Anglophone and Francophone communities, which are often divided by institutional and linguistic boundaries, and provide immediate, practical benefits for multilingual colleagues. ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── SUBMISSION GUIDELINES We invite proposals for individual papers (20-minute presentations). Submissions may be in English or French. Proposals of up to 500 words should be emailed to the convenors by 30 April 2026. Each submission must include: (i) a title; (ii) an abstract outlining the context, central question, and methodological approach; and (iii) a 100-word biographical note indicating the applicant’s discipline and institutional affiliation. Please send your proposals to the following addresses: - Frédérick Madore: frederick.madore(a)uni-bayreuth.de - Vincent Hiribarren: vincent.hiribarren(a)kcl.ac.uk - Emmanuel Ngue Um: ngueum(a)gmail.com - Menno van Zaanen: menno.vanzaanen(a)nwu.ac.za ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── PUBLICATION Our goal is to publish selected papers from the workshop as a special issue in the Journal of the Digital Humanities Association of Southern Africa (JDHASA), subject to agreement with the journal’s editorial board. All submitted full papers will undergo peer review. Authors whose papers are selected for the special issue will be expected to revise their manuscripts in line with reviewer feedback before final publication. ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── SELECTION CRITERIA & INCLUSIVITY Selection will prioritise gender equity, support for early-career scholars based in sub-Saharan Africa, and balance across disciplines and regions. In addition to scholars, we will include practitioner-developers by directly engaging the teams behind DH tools. Their participation will help us to assess user needs and the feasibility of embedding African ways of knowing in tool design. DH remains gender-imbalanced; accordingly, the open call will explicitly encourage applications from women and weight gender equity in review. We will intentionally include Africa-based, diasporic, and returning scholars. Recognising uneven DH capacity, particularly in several Francophone regions, we will aim for a majority of Africa-based participants and amplify Francophone voices through targeted outreach and reserved places for early-career researchers. The workshop will uphold equal opportunity regardless of gender, religion, or other sociocultural differences. ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── KEY DATES - Submission Deadline: 30 April 2026 - Notification of Acceptance: 15 May 2026 - Deadline for Full Papers: 15 August 2026 - Workshop Dates: 21–24 September 2026 ═══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════ ═ https://fmadore.github.io/stias-dh-ai-workshop-2026 ═══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════ ═ -- Prof Menno van Zaanen menno.vanzaanen(a)nwu.ac.za Professor in Digital Humanities South African Centre for Digital Language Resources https://www.sadilar.org ________________________________ NWU PRIVACY STATEMENT: http://www.nwu.ac.za/it/gov-man/disclaimer.html DISCLAIMER: This e-mail message and attachments thereto are intended solely for the recipient(s) and may contain confidential and privileged information. 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