By Segun Ige
On October 2 2019, participants at the inauguration of CEDHUL (CENTRE FOR DIGITAL HUMANITIES, UNIVERSITY OF LAGOS) considered the possibility of a digital-driven learning process in the Faculty of Arts.
Professor Tunde Ope-Davies (Opeibi) the Head of Department of English, Faculty of Arts, University of Lagos, was the host.
Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Germany made a symbolic handover of research equipment which it donated to the School of Arts that made researchers, lecturers and students deeply impressed.
The digital-driven research was the brainchild of the Humboldt Foundation.
In his Inaugural Lecture “Reconfiguring our worlds through words: A critical mapping of discourse in human social-cyberspace”, Ope-Davies said that since 2013, he has become actively and passionately interested in a digitally-driven cross-disciplinary approach to discourse.
He said the passion led to the establishment of the Digital Humanities Research Unit (DIHRU) in 2015, in the Faculty of Arts, the first of its kind in Nigeria and in Sub-Saharan Africa. “Now, the Faculty of Arts becomes a full-fledged 21st century research centre,” he said.
Also in 2017, Ope-Davies pioneered the inauguration of the Lagos Summer School in Digital Humanities (LSSDH) to serve as a platform to raise, train and equip scholars and researchers with certain Digital Humanities tools like AntConc, Voyant Tools, Keyhole, and Tropsy.
The HOD however noted that the Digital Humanities Research Unit is in collaboration with some international partners in Germany, Canada, the USA, and the UK.
“On my own part, I have employed the Cirrus of the Voyant Tools in the course of my analyzing His Excellency Mr. Babajide Sanwo-Olu’s Inaugural Address,” Ope-Davies added.
