Deadline extension: Due to several requests, we have decided to extend the deadlines for both the DHASA 2025 conference and the co-located RAIL workshop.
NEW DEADLINE: 4 August 2025 DHASA Conference dates: 10-14 November 2025 RAIL Workshop date: 10 November 2025 Venue: CSIR International Convention Centre. The sixth RAIL workshop website: https://sadilar.org/rail-2025/ DHASA website: https://digitalhumanities.org.za/
DHASA conference information (RAIL information follows below):
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.
RAIL 2025 Workshop information:
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.
Submission Guidelines for both RAIL and DHASA:
* 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.
Steps to submit your contributions: * Please register here: https://www.conftool.pro/dhasa2025 * Once registered, click on Your Submissions to submit a new contribution. * Here you will have the option to submit a: - DHASA Long paper - DHASA Short paper - DHASA Executive summary - RAIL submission * Select and click on your contribution type to continue. * Add the following detail: - Information on all the authors - Contribution details, including the title and topic best suited to your contribution. - Up to five keywords, and - An indication of whether students are submitting the contribution. * Upload your file and submit, or save your submission and return at a later stage to upload your file.
Peer Review Process
The peer review process is fully open. This means that the reviewers will see your name, and you will be able to see the reviewers’ names. This also means that you do not need to anonymise your submission.
Data Sets
Authors are encouraged to upload their dataset to the SADiLaR repository (https://repo.sadilar.org/). Guidelines for submission are available here: https://sadilar.org/en/resource-guidelines/. In case of difficulties uploading the datasets, please reach out to Benito Trollip (benito.trollip@nwu.ac.za).
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
*Please note that although we follow the ACL guidelines, the page limit for DHASA submissions differs from what is specified in those guidelines.
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/
DHASA Organising Committee
Sthembiso Mkhwanazi, Council for Scientific and Industrial Research Aby Louw, Council for Scientific and Industrial Research Andiswa Bukula, South African Centre for Digital Language Resources Franco Mak, Council for Scientific and Industrial Research 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
RAIL 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@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
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