Conference: Frontiers in African Digital Research

Digital Solutions

The section "Digital Solutions" within the Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence is organizing an international conference for the end of January 2020. The International Conference "Frontiers in African Digital Research" aims to provide a platform for international scholars and experts to exchange ideas and experiences.

The Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence, established at the University of Bayreuth in January 2019, aims to reconfigure African studies on both the conceptual and the structural level. New approaches to the analysis of African studies and African diasporic life worlds through the lens of multiplicity are being developed. The aim of the cluster is pursued by transdisciplinary research projects as well as by exploring new ways in the digital sphere: the possibilities of digital knowledge sharing and interaction of research data processes and outcomes.

Setting up a semantic driven digital knowledge information system that fosters the availability and visibility of the research data generated and processed in various research projects is one of the most challenging objectives of the Section “Digital Solutions” of the Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence. The envisioned goal is the exchange of research data with knowledge systems established simultaneously at partner institutions, primarily the African Cluster Centres: the University of Lagos (Nigeria), Université Joseph Ki-Zerbo (Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso), Moi University (Eldoret, Kenya) and Rhodes University (Grahamstown, South Africa). In creating equal conditions for access to data and knowledge, the section "Digital Solutions" seeks to overcome power imbalances by establishing a Digital Research Environment for the Cluster together with its partners.

The Conference Frontiers in African Digital Research is designed as a venue for exchange of ideas and experiences with international scholars and specialists from universities and research institutions alike. All relevant issues evolving around digital research procedures are discussed in four thematic panels, such as the relevance of the term Big Data to research data, the tension between the call for open science and legal restrictions, ongoing semantic projects of linked research data as well as the presentation of digital repositories on African related archival material.

It is anticipated that this exchange opens up new perspectives and approaches in the development of digital solutions in African Studies.

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Please find the conference programme here

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