A late but much needed start for Digital Humanities in South Africa

One of the many beauties in the town of Stellenbosch is the lovely huge and very old trees.

One can ask why it took so long for South Africans working within the field of Humanities to establish a Digital Humanities association but it would be more productive to focus on the fact that it finally happened and to everyone’s delight, the first Digital Humanities Association of Southern Africa conference will be held early next year in the lovely town of Stellenbosch, able to accommodate about 220 people.

From the sound of it, I gathered that this must be a relatively new subject field, but I was proven wrong. The father of ‘Humanities computing’ is Roberto Busa who already in the 1940’s introduced the subject field and the name change only came in 2008 when the publication ‘A Companion to Digital Humanities’ saw the light under editorship of Unsworth, Schreibman and Siemens.

Digital Humanities is, as the name suggests, the area of scholarly activity at the intersection between technology and Humanities. The movement is in both directions: Naturally, scholars use technology to enhance their work within the field of Humanities, but they also subject technology to investigation from their particular point of view.

What I want to do today is to inform you about the DHASA conference that will take place at the University of Stellenbosch on 17-20 January 2017. The first two days will packed with workshops and the conference will commence thereafter. The organizers also arranged for lovely and worthwhile tours and excursions on the weekend following the conference (at extra costs). There are two wine tours in the vicinity of Stellenbosch, the city tour of Cape Town and the Cape Peninsula tour that will take us to where the Atlantic and Indian oceans meet. O and the gala dinner promise to be something out of this world with the price tag set at R470 per person for a three course meal and the dress semi-formal.

As I said, better late than never, and hopefully the Digital Humanities Association of Southern Africa will grow extensively and rapidly and have a huge positive influence on lifting Humanities high in academic life. All the best of luck for the conference organizers and thank you for getting the ball rolling.