The 29th International AFRILEX Conference: Keynote Speakers
International Keynote:
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Prof Iztok Kosem, Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana; Jožef Stefan Institute, Ljubljana, Slovenia.
Bio: Iztok Kosem is a Senior Researcher at the University of Ljubljana having moved from the Faculty of Computer and Information Science to the Faculty of Arts and to the Jožef Stefan Institute in Ljubljana, Slovenia, where he has since been leading two research projects on the Comprehensive Slovenian-Hungarian dictionary and the Collocations dictionary of Modern Slovene. Previously, he was affiliated with the Trojina Institute in Ljubljana where he was successively the Director of the Institute for Applied Slovene Studies and the Head of the Centre for Applied Linguistics. His research interest encompasses domains of dictionary compilation, automatic data extraction for lexicographic purposes, crowdsourcing, and user-friendly language tools.
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Keynote title: Implementing AI in lexicographic workflow: challenges and opportunities.
African Keynote:
Prof Theo Bothma, Department of Information Science, University of Pretoria, South Africa
Bio: Prof Bothma is professor emeritus in the Department of Information Science. He joined the University of Pretoria in 1991 and was Head of Department from 1 October 1995 - 30 June 2016, when he retired. He was appointed as chairperson of the School of Information Technology on 1 September 2008 and served two terms, until his retirement. He currently holds a B3 rating from the National Research Foundation. In 2009 he was recognised by the University of Pretoria as an exceptional academic achiever, a three-year award (2010 - 2012), and again in 2012 (2013 - 2015).
His current research focuses on information organization and retrieval in the e-environment, information literacy, e-lexicography, digital humanities, usability studies, HCI and ethical design, and curriculum development. He is joint editor-in-chief of Libri: International Journal of Libraries and Information Studies. He was a member of the SeLA research initiative, initiated by Prof Ulrich Heid of the Institut fur Informationswissenschaft und Sprachtechnologie at the University of Hildesheim in Germany (funded by DAAD, 2011-2015), as well as a collaborator of CentLex at Aarhus University in Denmark, specifically with Professors Henning Bergenholtz and Sven Tarp.
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Keynote title: Generative artificial intelligence as information tool for lexicographic information needs