2nd LAGOS SUMMER SCHOOL IN DIGITAL HUMANITIES (LSSDH-2018)
(30th September – 6th Octobres 2018, University of Lagos)
The LSSDH was organized by the Department of Digital Culture and Discourse Studies of the University of Lagos (UNILAG) in collaboration with the University of Kohn in Germany. The Summer School was funded by the Volkswagen Foundation. The aim of this Summer School was to introduce/train students and young doctorates (some of whom have recently started careers in higher education) in the skills of digital culture and digital-based research, including hand-on experience in the application of some of the basic tools in the discipline, namely AntConc, Voyant, Python, Java etc. Participants came from the US, Canada, Germany, Togo, Ghana, Cameroon and Nigeria. The Summer school was the second such event being held in UNILAG, and brought together more than 150 participants. The broad vision is to introduce digital humanities to other universities in Sub-Saharan Africa—a cherished vision of the Volkswagen Foundation. Five participated came from Cameroon.
Title of Paper Presented :
Academic Writing and Grants Craftmanship in the Age of Digital Scholarship
Abstract: This presentation attempts to find a relationship between Academic Writing, Grant Craftsmanship and the Digital Age. It begins by discussing key issues involved in academic writing, and highlights the nature of the grant proposal as a genre which is often not directly accessible to public scrutiny. It then presents some characteristics of the Digital Age and briefly discusses three key social Medial Distribution Platforms (SocDissPlatforms), namely ResearchGate, Google Scholar and Academic.edu, which may help the potential grant applicant research to write a good proposal. Lastly, since linguistic research has significantly benefited from the Digital Age in terms of the availability of huge databases on computers and the www, the presentation will introduce corpus linguistics (data collection, data management, data processing) as an established research area in the Digital Age.
[International facilitators at the LSS-DH with members of the Cameroonian delegation]
ACADEMIC WRITING WORKSHOP FOR YOUNG ACADEMICS IN AFRICA
(28th May – 2 June, 2018, Benson Idahosa Univerity, Benin City, Nigeria)
This Academic Writing Workshop for Young Academics in Africa was organiszd by the Centre for Language Research and English Proficiency (CLAREP), and was sponsored by the Volkswagen Foundation. The workshop brought together 29 Young PhDs from Nigerian universities, and one from Tanzania. Mentors came from Nigeria, Ghana, Cameroon, and Germany. Throughout the event, these junior scientists learned the skills of drafting a research paper, editing one and revising it on the basis of feedback from peers and mentors.
Title of Paper Presented :
Rules, Structure & Language of the Research Paper
[Professor Nkemleke with some Nigerian participants at the workshop]
OUR MYTHICAL WORKSHOPS II
THE PRESENT MEETS THE PAST
(14-20 th May, 2018, Warsaw, Poland)
Our Mythical Workshops II was the second in a series of three workshops planned within the context of a European Research Council (ERC) Consolidator Grant Project (2016-2021). The project aims to build a database of children and young adults’ culture/literatures, including ancient myths from Africa.
Title of Paper Presented :
The “Ngondo” Myth of the Sawa People of Cameroon: commentary on selected excerpts from a newspaper interview
Abstract: Myths are common phenomena in all cultures and the degree of attachment to such narratives is often determined by the role they play in the collective psyche of the people involved. In many places in Cameroon, most myths are performed during special events in the cultural calendar of communities. The “Ngondo” myth, an annual water festival of the Sawa people of the Littoral Region of Cameroon, is one of such mythical performances that has stood the taste of time and has played a pivotal role in the construction of the mindset of many Sawa people and their society. According to Sawa oral custodians, the festival culminates into a ritual in the sea, where, in the course of a canoe expedition, an initiate would plunge into the river with a locally-weaved basket and he is believed to journey into the world of the ancestors and the spirits to bring back a message which will guide the traditional rulers in the course of the management of the affairs of the land for that year. The initiate would stay in the depth for hours and would come out without being soaked. This present paper is a commentary on selected excerpts of an interview by a “Ngondo” initiate to a newspaper, on the conduct of the 1993-Ngondo festival celebration. It is complemented by a personal interview granted by a contemporary “Ngondo” believer on the relevance of this festival to mythic fulfilment. The discussion intends to show that the relationship between the living, the dead, Gods and spirits among the Sawa people of the Littoral Region of Cameroon is very strong.
For some images at the workshop visit https://ff.classics.si/2018/10/22/ljubljana-varsava-2018/.