The AfriCHI’23 Doctoral and Masters Consortium is an in-person full-day event that will take place during the AfriCHI’23 conference. The primary goal of the DMC is to provide a forum for in-depth research discussions and to build a mentoring and peer network among a small group of participating Masters and Ph.D. students.
We anticipate that in the morning participants will briefly present their research questions and problem statement, and in the afternoon discuss a challenge they currently face in their research. All presentations will be about 5 minutes in duration.
If you would like to participate, please submit, using the Google Form brief information which outlines:
- Whether you are Masters or PhD student, and what stage you are currently at
- Your research topic and research methods
- Your hopes for this Consortium
- The main questions you would like to address in this Consortium.
The Google Form for your submission is “here”.
Important dates
Submission (using Google Form): 1st August 2023Decision about acceptance to workshop: 1st September 2023
Participants to confirm they will attend: 1st October 2023
Co-chairs/Facilitators
The Consortium will be facilitated by Melissa Densmore, Jacki O’Neill and Nic Bidwell
Dr Jacki O’Neill is founding Director of Microsoft Africa Research Institute (MARI). She is passionate about designing technologies which enhance, rather than remove, agency and create sustainable futures. She brings this passion to the MARI where she is building a multi-disciplinary team, combining research, engineering and design to solve local problems globally. An ethnographer by trade, specializing in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) her research aims to drive innovation in order to make the best possible technologies for work, health and society. She has led major research projects in the future of work, financial inclusion and global healthcare. She has >50 peer-reviewed articles, two innovation awards and 16 patents.
Associate Professor Melissa Densmore is Director of the HCI Lab at the University of Cape Town (UCT), and Coordinator of Hasso Plattner Institute Research School at UCT. Her research has a specific focus on co-design of local content and services for communities, particularly around digital maternal and child health, as well as contributing to the development of iNethi, a software platform designed to support community wireless networks. Melissa gained her PhD from the University of California, Berkeley School of Information and completed her postdoc with the Technology for Emerging Markets group at Microsoft Research in Bangalore, India.
Dr Nic (Nicola) Bidwell has held academic positions in Australia, Denmark, Namibia and South Africa. Her research, at the intersection of HCI and social informatics, focuses on rural settings and the Global Souths. Her recent studies include Community Networks and community radio and exploring predictive logics with Indigenous groups to produce more epistemically accountable AI. Nic has >120 peer-reviewed articles and an award for contributions to social and economic development and her work has influenced policy discussion. Nic co-founded AfriCHI and is chair for Sustainability on SIGCHI’s Executive Committee. She currently has a role in Digital Ethics at the University of Melbourne, while maintaining her home in rural Namibia.