Concept Note

Now in its fifth year, the African Digital Humanities Symposium brings together faculty, graduate students, librarians, and community members from the African continent and beyond to celebrate and explore digital scholarship as a diverse and growing field of humanistic inquiry, in addition to showcasing several Africa-focused DH projects that have been platformed and made more visible.  

This year, the theme of the Symposium is: Artificial Intelligence, Libraries, and Digital Preservation in Africa. Under this theme, the symposium will gather a diverse and multidisciplinary community of scholars, librarians, technologists, and practitioners to engage in an in-depth exploration of the intricate intersections between artificial intelligence (AI), libraries, and digital humanities practices, as well as the various DH projects enabling preservation work across the African continent. As AI technologies increasingly penetrate various sectors, they are transforming the fundamental ways in which knowledge is created, disseminated, and interacted with. Libraries, as long-established institutions dedicated to the preservation, organization, and dissemination of knowledge, are uniquely positioned at the vanguard of these transformations. They are exploring how AI and be harnessed to augment and responsibly enhance user access, improve resource discovery, and facilitate deeper engagement with a wide array of knowledge assets. At the same time, the field of digital humanities offers enormous opportunities to critically interrogate the cultural, social, and ethical dimensions of AI, scrutinizing the implications of these technologies on our understanding of the human experience, cultural heritage, and the complexities of knowledge production. 

This symposium seeks to cultivate a nuanced understanding of the multifaceted relationships between AI, libraries, and digital humanities, with a particular emphasis on the African context. We invite participants to engage in stimulating discussions centered around the potential benefits and challenges posed by AI in these contexts, especially with sometimes limited infrastructure for digital practices.  Topics to be covered potential AI-driven library practices in African contexts, data curation strategies, knowledge representation frameworks, methods for cultural heritage preservation, and a critical examination of the ethics related to AI-inspired knowledge dissemination. Click here to register....... Continue Reading.