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Doctoral/postdoc fellowships: 4IR/AI and care in Africa
Institute for Humanities in Africa (Huma), University of Cape Town, South Africa
Funding from the Carnegie Corporation of New York has made available three doctoral fellowships and four postdoctoral fellowships at the Institute for Humanities in Africa (Huma) based in the Faculty of Humanities of the University of Cape Town. The residential fellowships (barring time in the field) will provide funding renewable for up to four years, on condition of satisfactory annual progress and availability of funds.
The fellows will support the Institute’s 4IR initiative, which aims to generate new knowledge regarding the role of the human within the 4IR in Africa. This new initiative is focused on the ethical, policy, regulatory, governance and legal conundrums that underpin the current obsession with and future of AI in Africa, and globally. How will algorithms be coded into Africa’s care infrastructure? What kinds of hospital and care infrastructure will we need and what will they look like? The project will critically reflect on artificial intelligence and the possible future of hospitals and care infrastructure in Africa. The hospital is taken as a location from which to think through the ethical quandaries of being and institutionalised care, as the continent understandably rushes to embrace new technologies in its project to decolonise progress and suffering. The project asks intriguing questions about entanglements of AI and persistent modes of care, being and solidarity that have come to and will eventually define what it means to be human. How will AI change our relationship with care and hospitals? How will it affect our ideas about what it means to be well, disease free, hospitalized, cared for, governed and human?
For the postdoctoral fellowships, Huma is looking for early-mid career researchers with a Pan African focus who have a growing network with other African scholars and research organisations working on Africa, particularly in Africa and Africafocused global organisations.
For the doctoral fellowships, applications will be considered from interested applicants with a Master’s degree in appropriate disciplines or fields of study, particularly in the Humanities and Social Sciences, with a Pan African focus and Afropolitan outlook.
Applications Deadline: 30 November 2020
