Digital Humanities takes centre stage in futures research
- Wits University
Wits and the University of Edinburgh join forces with a new research Chair in Digital Humanities to shape more inclusive, just, and equitable digital futures.
Iginio Gagliardone, Professor of Media Studies at Wits University, has been appointed the inaugural SARChi SA-UK Bilateral Chair in the Digital Humanities.
The Chair is designed to break new ground in the Digital Humanities, broadening our understanding of the role of technology in society and re-centring Africa as a space of radical conceptual and technological innovation.
Advancements in literature, scholarship, research, and the arts over the past decade in Africa have begun to show how forms of knowledge that have been historically marginalised can offer pathways to reimagine more humane ways of interfacing with digital innovation.
“This Chair comes at a transformative moment for the relationship between the humanities and the digital, as well as for where and how Africa is positioned in innovation ecosystems (or processes),” says Gagliardone.
“We are witnessing a turn away from the narrow understanding that digital tools merely enhance the study of the humanities. There is a growing acknowledgement of the pivotal role the humanities play in shaping more just and inclusive information societies.”
He adds that African countries are interfacing with digital innovation and technologies in new ways. “Africa is less and less playing catch-up to techno-hegemonies, and there is greater confidence that many resources that were erased and marginalised by colonial powers can now be unearthed and leveraged in conjunction with digital tools.”
Africa’s new wave of digitisation
In the first wave of digitisation in Africa, digital technologies were perceived as ‘tools for development’. Today, citizens and societies in Africa are interfacing with a new wave of digital innovations, including artificial intelligence, in ways that are more ambivalent and complex.
Confidence in digital tools as a transformative force for social good is tempered by anxieties and concerns that AI-powered solutions will deepen inequalities and concentrate power in the hands of corporate and state actors. There are also growing questions about the promises of connectedness or entrepreneurship made by Big Tech, whose hypocrisy has been revealed through a pattern of exploitation, unequal treatment, and prioritisation of profit over genuine social impact.
Digital Humanities in action
Archives are often seen as static: resources that can be accessed by experts in the pursuit of their research goals but are not especially relevant to the general public. The rapid advancement of digital tools — and artificial intelligence in particular — has the potential to transform this.
Many scholars at Wits and other universities in South Africa are using existing archives, or creating new ones, not only to safeguard the past, but also to imagine new futures.
“This can take the form of using indigenous knowledge and African architecture to generate new visions of African cities, or of building on precolonial economic and social history to imagine how relationships among individuals and societies might differ if we once again tap into seemingly lost forms of sociality.”
“These new practices are informed by distinctive qualities of the humanities in the Global South. It is not about rewriting “capital-H” history, but about allowing multiple “lowercase histories” to emerge as inspiration for new ways of coexisting,” says Gagliardone.
South and North collaboration
The Bilateral SA-UK Chair will also strengthen existing partnerships and create new ones with the University of Edinburgh’s (UoE) pioneering Futures Initiative.
Co-Investigator, Professor Christian Vaccari, Chair in Future Governance, Public Policy, and Technology at UoE, says: “Professor Gagliardone’s timely project exemplifies the kind of innovative, boundary-crossing research we champion at the Edinburgh Futures Institute. By connecting diverse intellectual traditions and addressing urgent global challenges, this Chair will help reimagine how knowledge is produced and shared at a time of profound technological and social transformation. It also highlights the vital role of international collaboration in shaping more inclusive, just, and equitable digital futures.”
The first five years
The Chair in the Digital Humanities aims to produce a substantial body of high-quality research outputs over the next five years. This will include publications, human capital development, and the development of innovative methodologies. The Chair will not only have a transformative impact in South Africa and the National System of Innovation (NSI), but will also focus on placing South Africa at the centre of Africa-wide and global research and debate by delivering scholarship, training, and innovation at the highest level.
The Chair will also generate additional research outputs in the form of repositories, which will make curated datasets available to the research team and its network, as well as more broadly to the academic community.
About Professor Iginio Gagliardone
Iginio Gagliardone is Professor of Media Studies in the School of Literature, Language and Media, Faculties of Humanities, at Wits University.
He is also an Inaugural Fellow of the newly established Wits Machine Intelligence and Neural Discovery Institute — the Wits MIND Institute — an African-based interdisciplinary AI research hub that pushes the frontiers of scientific understanding of machine, human and animal intelligence.
He is the author of "Countering Online Hate Speech" (2015), “The Politics of Technology in Africa” (2016) and “China, Africa, and the Future of the Internet” (2019). His most recent work examines the international politics of Artificial Intelligence and the emergence of new imageries and materialities of technological evolution in Africa and the Global South.
About Wits University
The University of the Witwatersrand (Wits University) is a leading research-intensive university in Africa, recognised globally for its academic excellence, commitment to social justice, and dedication to the public good for over a century.
A leader in discovery research and impact-driven innovation, Wits pioneers advancements in fundamental and applied sciences through strong interdisciplinary collaborations that address local and global challenges to create a just, sustainable future for all.
With expertise in fields such as artificial intelligence, data science, neuroscience, and quantum computing, and embedded in a vibrant innovation ecosystem, Wits also produces market-ready solutions that drive economic impact while remaining committed to its ethics, values, and social responsibility. #WitsForGood
Read more about Research and Innovation at Wits University.
About the University of Edinburgh
The University of Edinburgh is consistently ranked among the world’s top universities, known for its research excellence, innovation, and global impact. A pioneer of Artificial Intelligence in Europe, one of Edinburgh’s key research themes is to use data, digital, and AI technologies to tackle environmental, social, and economic challenges. Its world-class computing infrastructure and interdisciplinary expertise enable responsible, ethical data-driven research across disciplines.
The Edinburgh Futures Institute is a new hub for interdisciplinary learning, research, and innovation at the University of Edinburgh. The Futures Institute addresses complex global issues by delivering a distinctive, interdisciplinary curriculum focused on innovation and societal challenges; building collaborative and transformational partnerships to tackle challenges, improve products and services, and develop new ones through better use and understanding of data and by supporting interdisciplinary collaborative, challenge-led research co-designed with communities, the third sector, business and industry partners.
Read more about Artificial Intelligence at the University of Edinburgh and Research and Innovation at the University of Edinburgh.