21 August 2026
The South African Centre for Digital Language Resources (SADiLaR) inaugurated four distinguished scholars as honorary fellows on 17 August 2026, marking an important milestone in strengthening collaboration, knowledge exchange and innovation in digital language resources and the digital humanities.
As a national research infrastructure, SADiLaR supports research and development relating to South Africa’s official languages, digital language resources, language technologies and broader humanities and social sciences research. The Centre’s work covers a broad range of areas, including local languages and language resources, language-related technologies, language policy planning, development and management, as well as disciplines in the digital humanities.
Building a network of expertise
The SADiLaR honorary fellowship programme provides an opportunity for accomplished academics and experts to contribute their knowledge, experience and networks to the Centre’s mandate. According to the honorary fellow’s charter, the programme enables experts to participate in SADiLaR projects and activities in areas such as digitisation, digital humanities and the higher education support programme.
The programme aims to recognise the expertise of leading scholars while creating opportunities for them to share their knowledge and experience for the broader benefit of society.
SADiLaR’s existing honorary fellows include Prof Justus Roux of Stellenbosch University, Prof Sonja Bosch of the University of South Africa (UNISA), and Prof Rufus Gouws of Stellenbosch University. They also play a leadership role within the honorary fellows’ programme of the SADiLaR committee, with Prof Roux serving as chairperson, Prof Bosch as deputy chairperson and Prof Gouws representing the honorary fellows.
Welcoming new honorary fellows
The 2026 inauguration formally welcomed four new honorary fellows to the SADiLaR community:
- Prof Frieda Steurs – KU Leuven
- Prof Theo Bothma – University of Pretoria
- Ms Bridgitte le Du – Rhodes University
- Prof Laurette Pretorius – University of Pretoria
Their appointment expands SADiLaR’s network of expertise and creates further opportunities for collaboration across institutions, disciplines and national borders. The fellows charter provides for both national and international experts to participate in the fellowship programme, reflecting SADiLaR’s commitment to building meaningful scholarly networks around digital language and humanities research.
Fellows as ambassadors for digital language innovation
The role of an honorary fellow extends beyond recognition. Fellows contribute to SADiLaR workshops and training initiatives, provide expert input on projects and proposals, contribute to strategic discussions, share developments in their fields, participate in think tank activities, and help connect SADiLaR with relevant national and international organisations.
Fellows also serve as ambassadors for SADiLaR, representing the Centre at national and international conferences and sharing developments in language technology and digital humanities with wider scholarly and professional communities.
The programme brings together expertise spanning areas such as language planning and development, digitisation, corpora development, computational Humanities, lexicography, forensic linguistics, education and other digital humanities applications.
SADiLaR’s chief director, Prof Langa Khumalo, stated: “The inauguration of Prof Frieda Steurs, Prof Theo Bothma, Ms Bridgitte le Du and Prof Laurette Pretorius represent more than the recognition of four individual scholars. It marks an important step in SADiLaR’s continued investment in collaboration, knowledge exchange and the collective expertise needed to shape a sustainable digital future for South Africa’s languages. Through the expanded network of honorary fellows, SADiLaR strengthens the bridge between established scholarship, emerging technologies and its broader vision for advancing multilingualism and digital humanities in the digital age.”
Written by: Lihle Sosibo