A month so very true to its kind...August. Windy! Luckily the wind brings rain, the dust clears up and we start seeing green leaves and spring blossoms as a reward. During this time you also feel that the year is swiftly moving towards the end and it feels like there is still a lot to be done before we can go on December holiday. 

The month was full of meetings for most of the SADiLaR team - from one-on-ones with our new Director, management meetings, SC and Node Management meetings. 

Things are slowly getting back to normal and more of the team members will be allowed back in the office. 

I hope that September will truly be kind to all of you and that you will be motivated to take on the rest of the year with new energy and innovative ideas.

Have a blessed month!

Kindest regards

Liané

August Blogs:

Below you can read up on the latest blogs on the SADiLaR web: 

Using the indigenous languages at universities: Why do it and can it work?

Imibhalo yezomlando ebhalwe ngolimi lwesiZulu

Researchers featured in August

The CODATA-RDA Research Data summer: First of its kind

Interesting news

Bridging the Gap between Culture Studies & Computational Linguistics

Menno van Zaanen (DH Professor at SADiLaR) and Inge van de Ven (Tilburg University), formed part of the CLARIN Twin Talks initiative. They did a presentation on bridging the gap between culture studies and computational linguistics – which was based on close and distant reading.

In this project they used manual annotations to evaluate distant reading, whereas close reading was used in a more autonomous sense (side by side with distant reading).

The project was conducted out of two departments, which made this a very interesting research topic.

In the video they discuss the challenges and the rewards of interdisciplinary research.

Have a look at the video on the CLARIN YouTube channel:

Published Article

Congratulations on this very interesting and modern day article Prof Menno...

The Influence of Game Character Appearance on Empathy and Immersion: Virtual Non-Robotic Versus Robotic Animals

Background. Empathic interactions with animated game characters can help improve user experience, increase immersion, and achieve better affective outcomes related to the use of the game.

Method. We used a 2x2 between-participant design and a control condition to analyze the impact of the visual appearance of a virtual game character on empathy and immersion. The four experimental conditions of the game character appearance were: Natural (virtual animal) with expressiveness (emotional facial expressions), natural (virtual animal) with non-expressiveness (without emotional facial expressions), artificial (virtual robotic animal) with expressiveness (emotional facial expressions), and artificial (virtual robotic animal) with non-expressiveness (without emotional facial expressions). The control condition contained a baseline amorphous game character. 100 participants between 18 to 29 years old (M=22.47) were randomly assigned to one of five experimental groups. Participants originated from several countries: Aruba (1), China (1), Colombia (3), Finland (1), France (1), Germany (1), Greece (2), Iceland (1), India (1), Iran (1), Ireland (1), Italy (3), Jamaica (1), Latvia (1), Morocco (3), Netherlands (70), Poland (1), Romania (2), Spain (1), Thailand (1), Turkey (1), United States (1), and Vietnam (1).

Results. We found that congruence in appearance and facial expressions of virtual animals (artificial + non-expressive and natural + expressive) leads to higher levels of self-reported situational empathy and immersion of players in a simulated environment compared to incongruent appearance and facial expressions.

Conclusions. The results of this investigation showed an interaction effect between artificial/natural body appearance and facial expressiveness of a virtual character’s appearance. The evidence from this study suggests that the appearance of the virtual animal has an important influence on user experience.

Upcoming Events and Workshops

Data Carpentry Workshops: 31 Aug -  4 Sept  & 14 - 18 Sept

NWU joint Gender & Language Awareness Week: 28 Sept - 2 Oct

Benito (and other colleagues) will be doing a lecture on 28 Sept: Exploring critical terminology: Gender, law and language

More info: http://www.nwu.ac.za/gender-and-language-awareness-weeks#call 

Join the HSRC webinar - Digital Humanities in South Africa: How to get started.

10 Sept 2020 - 12:30-14:00 on Zoom

Prof Menno van Zaanen is one of the presenters among other specialists in the field.

More info: https://www.sadilar.org/images/Digital_Humanities_in_South_Africa_-_how_to_get_started.pdf

RSVP by 9 Sept