The Faculty of Humanities is embarking on a project to put digital humanities on the research agenda by means of a digital platform entitled DIGITatUP. As part of the project, the organisers are inviting all UP students and staff to upload their selfies, preferably those taken on campus, to Instagram at #digitatup. Captions should be provided.

The idea is to engage with the selfies by employing digital humanities research methods and extracting uniquely UP traits.

A symposium, scheduled for 17–18 June, is titled 'All about ME: Digital humanities and representations of self' and will showcase international scholars in digital humanities and research on representations of the self (with a particular emphasis on selfies). On Friday 17 June key speakers Tara McPherson, from the University of Southern California (USC), who is the driving force behind the new authoring system Scalar, and Eduard Arriaga, from the University of Western Ontario (UWO) will share their experiences with the audience. Among the key speakers who will be showcasing their selfie scholarship on Saturday 18 June are Teresa Senft, author of Camgirls: Celebrity & community in the age of social networks (2008) and attached to New York University (NYU), and Adebayo Adegbembo (Genii Games, Nigeria). One of the planned events is a media interview on the topic, 'Selfies are more dangerous than sharks' to highlight the astonishing fact that in 2015 more people died while taking selfies than were killed by sharks.

The planning committee is steered by Prof Amanda du Preez, who teaches Visual Culture Studies in the Department of Visual Arts. She is assisted by a team of Faculty members: Dr Nisa Paleker, Daniel Mosako, Rory du Plessis, Dr Chris Broodryk, Dr Jenni Lauwrens, Prof Alexander Johnson, Marinda Maree and postgraduate students Cheree Swanepoel, Obakeng Kgongoane, Karli Brittz, Deneesher Pather and Martin Giebler.

For more information contact [email protected] or visit the new webpage: https://digitatup2016.wordpress.com/.