Second Call for Papers DHASA Conference 2026 https://dh2026.digitalhumanities.org.za
Theme: Building the Methodological Commons: Plural Digital Humanities, AI, and Socio-Technical Futures in Southern Africa
Conference: 17-20 November 2026 ยท University of Eswatini, Kwaluseni, Kingdom of Eswatini
Important dates
Submission deadline: 20 August 2026 Date of notification: 21 September 2026 Camera-ready copy deadline: 19 October 2026 Conference: 17 November 2026-20 November 2026 Conference venue: University of Eswatini, Kwaluseni, Kingdom of Eswatini
Co-located events
Several co-located events are currently being prepared, including workshops and tutorials. These will be updated on the conference website.
Submission types
- Long papers: max 8 content pages (9 in final version), presented in 30-minute slots (incl. 10 min questions) - Short papers: max 5 content pages (6 in final version), presented in 15-minute slots (incl. 5 min questions) - Executive summaries: max 1 page, presented as posters
References and appendices are unlimited for long and short papers. All submissions must be in PDF and follow the ACL style guide (https://acl-org.github.io/ACLPUB/formatting.html). Submissions that do not adhere to the style guide will be rejected. Submit via the platform: https://dh2026.digitalhumanities.org.za/submission/
Accepted long and short papers will be published in the JDHASA journal; executive summaries will appear in a book of summaries before the conference. We particularly encourage submissions where the first author is a student. Authors are encouraged to upload datasets to the SADiLaR repository (https://repo.sadilar.org/); for difficulties, contact Benito Trollip (benito.trollip@nwu.ac.za).
About the conference
This conference foregrounds DH as method-making and infrastructure- building, not only tool use. It invites scholarship that advances shared practices (methods, standards, datasets, workflows, pedagogies) while staying attentive to the politics of computation, language, heritage, and knowledge-making in Southern Africa. It also explicitly welcomes critical engagements with AI as an epistemic and cultural force shaping humanities inquiry. Contributions are welcome from across the humanities and allied fields, as well as from computer scientists, data scientists, designers, librarians, archivists, journalists, educators, and community practitioners.
Subthemes (non-exclusive; interdisciplinary contributions encouraged)
- AI in the humanities, responsibly - Southern African language technologies and linguistic justice - Decolonial, Indigenous, and community-engaged DH - Digital heritage, archives, history, and memory work - Critical platform studies, media, and computational publics - Pedagogy, curriculum, and capacity-building - Infrastructure, sustainability, and open scholarly ecosystems
The full call for papers, including detailed subtheme descriptions and co-located events, is available at https://dh2026.digitalhumanities.org.za
-- 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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