Digital Methodologies Workshop for Researching Africa

Venue: Room 9.04 Fawcett House (Faw 9.04), London School of Economics and Political Science

Note: This is an in-person workshop aimed at MA students, PhD candidates and early career researchers and places are limited. Please register here, and the agenda will be shared before the event. Contact us on if you have questions.

Summary

Social, economic and political life in Africa is undergoing a digital transformation, provoking new questions about societal and power relations and the possibilities for development and change. Yet advances in digital technology also create new opportunities for researchers, encouraging methodological innovation. This workshop explores how digital tools are being employed to conduct research in African settings. It aims to provide early career researchers with inspiration and skills to inform new research projects, and a forum to discuss ongoing research. It considers how and why scholars are using digital methodologies and examines the ethical and political questions surrounding the use of digital technology for research and in society.

Dr Marie Rodet (The School of Oriental and African Studies, SOAS), Umoja: Collaborative Digital Storytelling and Historical Justice in Africa, showcases how participatory research and game design empower communities on the Kenyan coast to reclaim histories of slavery and amplify marginalised voices.

Dr Adio-Adet Dinika (The Distributed AI Research Institute, DAIR), Reclaiming the Right to Research: Worker-Led Digital Methodologies in the Age of AI, will introduce worker-led inquiry as a radical and ethical framework that centres AI data workers as co-researchers and reimagines digital research as a site of solidarity and political intervention.

Manon Louis & Tarig Ali (Centre for Information Resilience), Digital Methodologies: Investigating Conflict-Related Incidents in Sudan, will discuss the use of open-source data, approaches to collection, verification, and digital archiving, as well as the ethical challenges of investigating human rights violations in Sudan.

Prof. Ayona Datta (University College London, UCL), Regional Futures: The Territorial Politics of Digitalisation-as-Urbanisation in the Global South, uses a comparison of Nairobi, Mumbai, and Guadalajara to investigate how digitalisation actively reshapes state power and regional urbanisation in the global south. It explores how municipal digital governance creates new political dynamics.

Nanjala Nyabola, The Ethics and Politics of Research in the Digital Age, will draw on Nanjala’s work in Kenya and explore the ethical and political issues that arise from using technology in conducting research in Africa. It highlights the fact that technology is not neutral and that researchers must analyse the conflicts that arise from using the digital rather than assuming technology as an inherent good.

About the Panellists:

Dr Marie Rodet (The School of Oriental Studies, SOAS)

Marie is a Reader, senior lecturer in the History of Africa (SOAS). Her research interests lie in the fields of migration history, gender studies, and the history of slavery in West Africa during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Dr Adio-Adet Dinika (The Distributed AI Research Institute, DAIR)

Adio is a social scientist and writer specialising in the political economy of AI labour, with a focus on the Global South. His work examines the invisible labour that powers AI systems, including data annotation, content moderation, and algorithmic management, as well as the broader power dynamics shaping digital transformation.

Manon Louis (Centre for Information Resilience)

Manon is currently an open-source analyst, investigating in Sudan. She has also worked extensively in EU policy, designing and collecting testimony, mapping border regions, and locating missing people.

Tarig Ali (Centre for Information Resilience)

Tarig is a GIS & Remote Sensing Expert at the Centre for Information Resilience, utilising his geospatial analysis skills to counter dis- and misinformation, and create products that support humanitarian actions and information resilience. He has built and operated a full 3D station setup for stereo photogrammetry, generating products such as DSM, DEM, point clouds, and mesh models.

Prof. Ayona Datta (University College London, UCL)

Ayona is a professor of Human Geography at University College London. Her research interests include postcolonial urbanism, digital geographies, and regional futures. Her current ERC (Adv Grant) project on ‘Regional Futures’ advances theoretical and empirical insights into the relationship between digitalisation and urbanisation in India, Kenya and Mexico.

Nanjala Nyabola

Nanjala is a Nairobi-based independent writer and researcher whose work focuses on the intersection of technology, media, and society. A graduate of Oxford University and Harvard Law School, she has authored books exploring the internet's impact on Kenyan politics.

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