Digital Humanities and AI in African Studies in Hannover

Photo by Calum Houston

Many thanks to Frédérick Madore (University of Bayreuth) and Vincent Hiribarren (King’s College London) for organizing the scoping workshop “Charting New Territory: Digital Humanities and AI in African Studies.” The workshop was supported by the Volkswagen Foundation.

Agata Błoch was delighted to participate in this inspiring event, which brought together scholars from digital humanities, African studies, and computational research to reflect on how AI and digital methods can engage more thoughtfully with African knowledge systems.

Agata joined the working group “Epistemologies, Decoloniality & Ethical Frameworks,” where we discussed how digital tools, classification systems, and AI datasets might better reflect African epistemologies, including oral, visual, and non-Western textual traditions, rather than reproducing inherited colonial categories. We also explored how ethical frameworks can ensure that African cultural heritage is not simply treated as raw data for AI, but that communities can benefit from digital and computational research.

The conversations do not end here: the workshop will lead to a jointly authored position paper summarizing the most important observations from the discussions – so stay tuned!

It was a pleasure to exchange ideas with such an inspiring group of colleagues.

More about the workshop:

https://fmadore.github.io/dh-ai-african-studies-2026/