Workshop requests

All workshops sponsored by SADiLaR implement the SADiLaR Workshop Code of Conduct.

For Institutions

We can deliver customised training at your institution, tailored to your community’s specific needs and research interests under the ESCALATOR programme.

About ESCALATOR

ESCALATOR is SADiLaR’s flagship capacity development programme designed to grow an inclusive and active South African community of practice in Digital Humanities and Computational Social Sciences. Through strategic partnerships and tailored training initiatives, ESCALATOR provides researchers, students, and educators with the skills and resources needed to engage with digital and computational methods in humanities and social sciences research.

 

Workshop Tracks Available

Digital Champions Initiative Workshops

The ESCALATOR programme offers workshops through its multi-track Digital Champions Initiative, providing structured support for participants at various stages of their computational journey:

Explorer Track

For researchers and students new to digital scholarship who want to learn about foundational concepts and understand what they could gain from digital approaches.

Offerings include:

  • Monthly Digital Humanities Colloquia (typically Wednesdays, 10:00-11:00 SAST)
  • Introduction to Digital Humanities concepts
  • Overview of digital tools and methodologies

Embarker Track

For scholars who already have some idea of digital scholarship but want to learn more and start applying computational methods to their own work.

Workshops include:

  • First Steps in Programming (for complete novices)
    • Interactive online workshops over four 90-minute sessions
    • Python or R for beginners
  • First Steps in Annotating Linguistic Data
  • Facilitated courses available through our Moodle platform

Enhancer Track

For those more experienced in digital and computational research who want to develop specific skills to support their research projects.

Educator Track

For scholars interested in developing contextualized open educational resources for digital humanities or computational social sciences.

Includes:

  • DH OER Champions Programme
  • Support for creating open educational resources
  • Workshops on OER development and implementation

Empower Track

Connects women in humanities and social sciences to existing communities that support women in technology.

Offerings:

    • Panel discussions and networking events
    • Community co-working sessions
    • Skills development workshops focused on equity and inclusion

Carpentries Workshops

SADiLaR offers internationally recognized Carpentries training:

Data Carpentry

  • Further information to be shared

Software Carpentry

  • Further Information to be shared

Library Carpentry

  • Further Information to be shared

Digital Humanities & Linguistic Tools

Corpus Creation and Management

  • Introduction to corpus collection
  • Metadata and annotation standards
  • Data curation best practices
  • Digitization techniques
  • Corpus formats (XML, TEI)

Text Processing and Analysis

  • Text preprocessing and cleaning
  • Part-of-speech tagging
  • Phrase chunking
  • Named entity recognition
  • Optical character recognition (OCR)
  • Language identification
  • Word frequency analysis
  • Concordance and keyword-in-context
  • Collocations and relationships
  • Visualization of text analysis results

Digital Annotation and Digitisation

  • Creating annotated corpora
  • Schema design for annotations
  • Quality control in annotation projects
  • Working with multilingual texts

DH-IGNITE Regional Events

ESCALATOR hosts DH-IGNITE events that bring together researchers, students, and practitioners from across South Africa to explore Digital Humanities and Computational Social Sciences.

These events include:

  • Hands-on workshops
  • Lightning talks on research projects
  • Networking sessions
  • Presentations on digital tools and methodologies
  • Panel discussions on the future of digital scholarship in South Africa

Workshop Request Process:

  1. Complete our workshop request form
  2. Consultation to design appropriate content aligned with ESCALATOR tracks
  3. Scheduling and logistics planning
  4. Workshop delivery with ongoing follow-up support through the Digital Champions Initiative

Join the Digital Champions Initiative

Membership in the Digital Champions Initiative is open to students, researchers, and staff affiliated with South African institutions. Join as a Participant, Contributor, Collaborator, Learner, Instructor, Mentor, or Mentee.

Benefits include:

  • Targeted training opportunities aligned with your specific track
  • Access to mentorship from experienced practitioners
  • Opportunities to collaborate across disciplinary boundaries
  • Resources for implementing digital approaches in your own contexts
  • A nationwide network of peers facing similar challenges and opportunities

Contact Us

For workshop requests and more information about ESCALATOR email: escalator@sadilar.org

Learn more: