Reported by Prof Chris van Rhyn
MASARA and the School of Music were well represented at the 2025 Faculty of Humanities Spring School, held from 17 to 19 September at the Riverside Sun Hotel in Vanderbijlpark. Prof Janelize Morelli, the newly appointed Director of NWU’s Centre for Digital Humanities, was the event’s main organiser, and its focus was “The Digital, the human, and the possible: Rethinking humanities research in the age of AI”.
Dr Bryan Carter, Director of the Center for Digital Humanities and a professor in Africana Studies at the University of Arizona, was the first keynote speaker. His talk, “Digital futures: Leveraging AI for transformative research, teaching, and outreach in the humanities”, was followed by a workshop on image, video and sound generation AI tools. The second keynote speaker was Prof Paul Arthur, the Vice-Chancellor’s Professorial Research Fellow and Professor of Digital Humanities and Social Sciences at Edith Cowan University in Australia, who spoke about his digital heritage practices and projects.
Prof Chris van Rhyn, MASARA’s Director, presented a workshop on strategies and tools for developing research topics using AI. Ms Thandeka Mfinyongo and Ms Thembinkosi Magagula [below, left] gave a presentation titled “Project management and productivity for PhD students and early career researchers”. Prof Ewie Erasmus [below, right] presented a workshop on qualitative data analysis using Atlas.ti 25, which she developed in collaboration with Prof Liesl van der Merwe. Prof Mignon van Vreden and Ms Tebogo Morudu also attended the event.
The Spring School culminated in the official launch of the Centre for Digital Humanities on 19 September. Other than Prof Morelli’s introductory speech and a roundtable discussion on “The role of digital humanities in ensuring technological alignment for humane, sustainable futures”, delegates were entertained by the School of Music’s CCM Ensemble, directed by Dr Michelle Pretorius and Ms Titi Luzipo.
