Deadline extension: DHASA Conference 2025
https://dh2025.digitalhumanities.org.za
Due to several requests, we have decided to extend the deadlne
NEW DEADLINE: 28 July 2025
Theme: The role of humanities in digital humanities and artificial
intelligence
The Digital Humanities Association of Southern Africa (DHASA) is
pleased to announce its fifth conference, focusing on the theme The
role of humanities in digital humanities and artificial intelligence.
In a region where the field of Digital Humanities is still relatively
underdeveloped, this conference aims to address this gap and foster
growth and collaboration in the field. The conference offers an
opportunity for researchers interested in showcasing their work in the
broad field of Digital Humanities to come together. By doing so, the
conference provides a comprehensive overview of the current state-of-
the-art in Digital Humanities, particularly within the Southern Africa
region. As such, we welcome submissions related to Digital Humanities
research conducted by individuals from Southern Africa or research
focused on the geographical area of Southern Africa in the broad sense.
Furthermore, the conference serves as a platform for information
sharing and networking among researchers passionate about Digital
Humanities. By bringing together experts working on Digital Humanities
in Southern Africa or with a focus on Southern Africa, we aim to
promote collaboration and facilitate further research in this dynamic
field. In addition to the main conference, affiliated workshops and
tutorials will be organised, providing researchers with valuable
insights into novel technologies and tools. These supplementary events
are designed for researchers interested in specific aspects of Digital
Humanities or seeking practical information to enter or advance their
knowledge in the field.
The DHASA conference welcomes interdisciplinary contributions from
researchers in various domains of Digital Humanities, including, but
not limited to, language, literature, visual art, performance and
theatre studies, media studies, music, history, sociology, psychology,
language technologies, library studies, philosophy, methodologies,
software and computation, AI, and more. Our goal is to cultivate an
inclusive scientific community of practice within Digital Humanities.
Suggested topics include the following:
* The role of AI in digital humanities, the role of Digital Humanities
in shaping AI, and the broader role of the humanities in both AI and DH
projects;
* Digital archives and the preservation of marginalised voices;
* Intersectionality and the digital humanities: exploring the
intersections of race, gender, sexuality, culture, and class in digital
research and activism;
* Activism and social change through digital media: how digital
humanities tools and methodologies can be used to promote inclusion;
* Engaging marginalised communities in the creation and use of digital
tools, resources, and AI;
* Exploring the role of digital humanities in decolonising knowledge
and promoting indigenous perspectives;
* The ethics of data collection and analysis in digital humanities and
AI research;
* The role of digital humanities and AI in promoting inclusive and
equitable pedagogy;
* Digital humanities and inclusion in the context of African and global
perspectives and international collaborations;
* Critical approaches to digital humanities and inclusion: examining
the limitations and possibilities of digital tools and methodologies in
promoting inclusion; and
* Collaborative digital humanities projects with non-profit
organisations, community groups, and cultural institutions;
* Development of digital and AI tools for supporting digital
humanities;
* Novel utilisation of digital and AI tools for performing digital
humanities research;
* The role of digital humanities in the classroom: reimagining literacy
and AI fluency;
* Digital humanities data and project management;
* The role of librarians in the digital humanities project;
* Any other digital humanities-related topic that serves the Southern
African community.
Submission Guidelines
The DHASA conference 2025 asks for three types of submissions:
* Long papers: Authors may submit long papers with a maximum of 8
content pages and unlimited pages for references and appendices. The
final versions of accepted long papers will be granted an additional
page (leading to a total of up to 9 content pages) to incorporate
reviewers' comments. Long papers accepted for the conference will be
presented in 30-minute time slots (which includes 10 minutes for
questions).
* Short papers: Authors may submit short papers with a maximum of 5
content pages and unlimited pages for references and appendices. The
final versions of accepted short papers will be allowed an extra page
(leading to a total of up to 6 content pages) to accommodate reviewers'
comments. Short papers accepted for the conference will be presented in
15-minute time slots (which includes 5 minutes for questions).
* Executive summaries: Authors can submit an executive summary for work
in progress, limited to 1 page. Executive summaries accepted for the
conference will be presented as posters during a dedicated poster
presentation slot.
All accepted long and short paper submissions that are presented at the
conference will be published in the JDHASA journal, see
https://upjournals.up.ac.za/index.php/dhasa. In addition, the executive
summaries for the poster presentations will be published in a book of
executive summaries before the conference.
We particularly encourage student submissions where the first author is
a student.
All submissions should adhere to the ACL style guide:
https://acl-org.github.io/ACLPUB/formatting.html
Submissions should be submitted in PDF format. Submissions that do not
adhere to the prescribed style guide will be rejected.
Follow this link to go to the submission platform:
https://dh2025.digitalhumanities.org.za/submission/
Authors are encouraged to upload their datasets to the SADiLaR
repository: https://repo.sadilar.org/. In case of difficulties
uploading the datasets, please reach out to Benito Trollip
(benito.trollip(a)nwu.ac.za).
Important dates
Submission deadline: 28 July 2025
Date of notification: 16 September 2025
Camera-ready copy deadline: 24 October 2025
Conference: 10 November 2025 - 14 November 2025
Conference venue: CSIR ICC, Pretoria, South Africa
Co-located events
Several co-located events are currently being prepared, including
workshops and tutorials. These will be updated on the conference
website.
Organising Committee
Aby Louw, Council for Scientific and Industrial Research
Andiswa Bukula, South African Centre for Digital Language Resources
Avi Moodley, Council for Scientific and Industrial Research
Franco Mak, Council for Scientific and Industrial Research
Franziska Pannach, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen
Ilana Wilken, Council for Scientific and Industrial Research
Johannes Sibeko, Nelson Mandela University
Juan Steyn, South African Centre for Digital Language Resources
Laurette Marais, Council for Scientific and Industrial Research
Marissa Griesel, South African Centre for Digital Language Resources
Menno van Zaanen, South African Centre for Digital Language Resources
Privolin Naidoo, Council for Scientific and Industrial Research
Sthembiso Mkhwanazi, Council for Scientific and Industrial Research
--
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
________________________________
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Deadline extension: Sixth Workshop on Resources for African Indigenous
Language (RAIL)
Co-located with DHASA 2025
https://sadilar.org/rail-2025/
Due to several requests, we have decided to extend the deadlne
NEW DEADLINE: 28 July 2025
RAIL Workshop date: 10 November 2025
DHASA Conference dates: 10-14 November 2025
Venue: CSIR International Convention Centre.
The sixth RAIL workshop website: https://sadilar.org/rail-2025/
DHASA website: https://digitalhumanities.org.za/
The sixth Resources for African Indigenous Languages (RAIL) workshop
will be co-located with the Digital Humanities Association of Southern
Africa (DHASA) 2025 conference at the CSIR International Convention
Centre in Pretoria, South Africa, on 10 November 2025. The RAIL
workshop is an interdisciplinary platform for researchers working on
African indigenous languages resources such as natural languages
processing (NLP) tools, Human Language Technologies (HLT), data
collections, and annotations. This workshop aims to foster a
scientific community of practice that focuses on computational
linguistic tools and data that are designed for or applied to the
indigenous languages of Africa.
Many African languages are under-resourced while only a few are
considered to be somewhat better resourced. These languages often share
interesting properties such as writing systems, making them different
from most high-resourced languages. From a computational perspective,
these languages lack enough corpora to undertake high level development
of NLP and HLT tools, which in turn impedes the development of African
languages in these areas. During previous workshops, it was noted that
the problems and solutions presented were not only applicable to
African languages but were also relevant to many other low-resource
languages across the world. Because these languages share similar
challenges, this workshop provides researchers with opportunities to
work collaboratively on issues of language resource development and
learn from each other.
The RAIL workshop has several aims. First, the workshop brings together
researchers who work on African indigenous languages, forming a
community of practice for people working on indigenous languages.
Second, the workshop aims to reveal currently unknown or unpublished
existing resources (corpora, NLP tools, and applications), resulting in
a better overview of the current state-of-the-art, and also allows for
discussions on novel, desired resources for future research in this
area. Third, it enhances sharing of knowledge on the development of
low-resource languages. Finally, it enables discussions on how to
improve the quality as well as availability of the resources.
The workshop has “Language resources in the age of large language
models” as its theme, but submissions on any topic related to
properties of African indigenous languages (including related non-
African languages) may be accepted. Suggested topics include (but are
not limited to) the following:
* Digital representations of linguistic structures
* Descriptions of corpora or other data sets of African indigenous
languages
* Building resources for (under-resourced) African indigenous languages
* Developing and using African indigenous languages in the digital age
* Effectiveness of digital technologies for the development of African
indigenous languages
* Revealing unknown or unpublished existing resources for African
indigenous languages
* Developing desired resources for African indigenous languages
* Improving quality, availability and accessibility of African
indigenous language resources
Submission requirements:
We invite papers on original, unpublished work related to the topics of
the workshop. Submissions, presenting completed work, may consist of up
to eight (8) pages of content plus additional pages of references. The
final camera-ready version of accepted long papers are allowed one
additional page of content (up to 9 pages) so that reviewers’ feedback
can be incorporated. Papers should be formatted according to the DHASA
style sheet which is provided on the Journal of the Digital Humanities
Association of Southern Africa website
(https://upjournals.up.ac.za/index.php/dhasa/about). Reviewing is
double-blind, so make sure to anonymise your submission (e.g., do not
provide author names, affiliations, project names, etc.) Limit the
amount of self citations (anonymised citations should not be used). The
RAIL workshop follows the DHASA submission requirements.
Please submit papers in PDF format (the submission link is available on
the website). Accepted papers will be published in proceedings linked
to the DHASA conference.
Important dates:
Submission deadline: 28 July 2025
Date of notification: 16 September 2025
Camera ready copy deadline: 24 October 2025
Workshop: 10 November 2025
DHASA conference: 10 November 2025-14 November 2025
Organising Committee
Rooweither Mabuya, South African Centre for Digital Language Resources
(SADiLaR), South Africa
Muzi Matfunjwa, South African Centre for Digital Language Resources
(SADiLaR), South Africa
Mmasibidi Setaka, South African Centre for Digital Language Resources
(SADiLaR), South Africa
Menno van Zaanen, South African Centre for Digital Language Resources
(SADiLaR), South Africa
--
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. Any unauthorised review, use, disclosure, or distribution is prohibited. If you have received the e-mail by mistake, please contact the sender or reply e-mail and delete the e-mail and its attachments (where appropriate) from your system.
________________________________