The Lagos State Deputy Governor, Dr Obafemi Hamzat, will on Tuesday inaugurate a remodelled Digital Humanities Centre and a Smart Postgraduate Classroom at the University of Lagos, The PUNCH reports, based on a press statement obtained over the weekend.
The facilities being unveiled, according to the statement, will serve as the academic base for the university’s new postgraduate programmes in Digital Humanities.
The twin facilities, developed by the University of Lagos Centre for Digital Humanities, will house the centre’s Postgraduate Diploma, Master’s and Doctoral programmes in Digital Humanities, which the university described as the first of their kind in the region.
Founded in 2019, CEDHUL has positioned itself at the intersection of African languages, archives, cultures and emerging technologies, with research activities spanning digital archiving, text and data analysis, computational linguistics and artificial intelligence.
The centre’s Founding Director and the first professor of Digital Humanities in Nigeria and sub-Saharan Africa, Babatunde Ope-Davies, described the inauguration as the opening of “a doorway, not just a building.”
Prof Ope-Davies said the new facilities represented an effort to redefine humanities scholarship by bringing Africa’s inherited knowledge into the digital age.
“The facilities are where that meeting happens: where we are redefining the future of the humanities; where Africa’s inherited knowledge is preserved, interpreted and carried forward with the tools of the digital age,” he said.
The professor said the centre was “deeply honoured” that Hamzat would inaugurate the facilities.
The remodelled Digital Humanities Centre is intended to provide a collaborative research environment for scholars working with digital archives, computational methods and data, while the Smart Postgraduate Classroom is designed as a technology-enabled learning space for students enrolled in the centre’s new postgraduate programmes.
The development comes as universities increasingly incorporate artificial intelligence and other digital technologies into academic research, while CEDHUL seeks to apply those tools to the study and preservation of African knowledge, languages, cultures and histories.
In a separate statement ahead of the inauguration, Ope-Davies said the centre was “redefining the future of the Humanities,” describing the facilities as the product of collaboration between the university and its partners in Nigeria and abroad.
“What we celebrate is the fruit of many hands: the university, our partners at home and abroad, and now the government of Lagos State.
“We are grateful to His Excellency for standing with us as we open these doors to a new generation of African digital scholars,” he said.
Hamzat’s inauguration of the facilities also brings the Lagos State Government’s innovation agenda into the university’s emerging digital humanities programme.
The centre said the deputy governor’s participation reflected the connection between the state’s ambition to build a technology-driven and knowledge-based economy and the university’s efforts to develop scholars equipped to work across the humanities and digital technology.
CEDHUL said its broader objective was to ensure that African scholarship was not marginalised in the digital transformation of research and knowledge production.
The ceremony will be attended by the Vice-Chancellor, Prof Folasade Ogunsola and principal officers of the university, deans, scholars, students, development and industry partners, members of the diplomatic community and the media.
Punchng
