Call for Participation

DHASA Conference and RAIL workshop 2025
https://dh2025.digitalhumanities.org.za
https://sadilar.org/en/rail-2025/

DHASA conference dates: 11 November 2025-14 November 2025
RAIL workshop date: 10 November 2025
Conference venue: CSIR ICC, Pretoria, South Africa

Registration: https://dh2025.digitalhumanities.org.za/registration/

DHASA CONFERENCE

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 WORKSHOP

Theme: Language resources in the age of large language models

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.


Organising Committees

DHASA conference

Aby Louw, 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

RAIL workshop

Rooweither Mabuya, South African Centre for Digital Language Resources
Muzi Matfunjwa, South African Centre for Digital Language Resources
Mmasibidi Setaka, South African Centre for Digital Language Resources
Menno van Zaanen, South African Centre for Digital Language Resources

--
Prof Menno van Zaanen     [email protected]
Professor in Digital Humanities
South African Centre for Digital Language Resources
https://www.sadilar.org
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