Professor Iginio Gagliardone (Wits University) visited Helsinki at the end of August as a part of the Africa Programme Seed Funding. The purpose of Professor Gagliardone’s visit was to learn how (and if) the work developed at HSSH over the past 5 years could provide inspiration for South Africa.
Gagliardone was recently appointed the inaugural SARChI SA–UK Bilateral Chair in Digital Humanities, a five-year collaboration between Wits University and the University of Edinburgh that aims to place African scholarship at the centre of global debates on digital futures. Over the next five years, the Chair will develop new computational and AI-related methods, pedagogical training and public resources to support more inclusive and just uses of digital technologies in the African context.
His visit to Helsinki included two public events. During the HSSH brown bag seminar, Gagliardone and HSSH Senior Researcher Matti Pohjonen engaged in dialogue on how AI is potentially reshaping research in the social sciences and humanities in different global contexts. The discussion asked practical questions: how do we build fair methods, share data responsibly, and recognise knowledge traditions that have often been sidelined from dominant debates on AI? It also reflected on the limits of our “epistemological imagination” – what counts as valid knowledge and who gets to decide.
In his public New Research Culture lecture, Gagliardone contrasted older, nation state-centred approaches to digital and AI governance with what he calls more “networked” forms of authority – an idea rooted in African political thought that looks beyond borders toward collaborative governance of digital life.
The next stage of this collaboration between Helsinki/HSSH and Wits will include a return visit by University Researcher Matti Pohjonen in November and two workshops to advance these ideas with selected PhD and post-doctoral students.