Doctoral & Masters Consortium

The AfriCHI’25 Doctoral and Masters Consortium (DMC) is an in-person full-day event that provides a forum for in-depth research discussions, mentoring, and peer network among a small group of participating Masters and Ph.D. students and a small panel of established HCI researchers in Africa. Given the theme of the AfriCHI 2025 conference, “Re-centering African Wisdom in HCI”, the DMC aims to foster and support Doctoral and Masters projects that advance Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) research grounded in African contexts, perspectives, and knowledge systems. 

The objectives are that the selected students will:

• Gain new ideas and perspectives on their research directions.
• Support each other by offering constructive feedback to the other participants.
• Form new friendships with other participants, together becoming a supportive cohort of emerging scholars with a spirit of collaborative research; and
• Engage fully with the AfriCHI conference by participating in the events and opportunities that AfriCHI offers and enjoying interactions with other AfriCHI conference attendees.

DMC participants will present their research questions and problem statements in the morning session. In the afternoon, participants will discuss a challenge they currently face in their research. All presentations will be about 5 minutes in duration. 

Submission Details
‍Please submit your application using the Google Form. The AfriCHI 2025 DMC participants will provide brief information which outlines:

• Whether you are Master or PhD student, and what stage you are currently at
• Institution and Supervisor(s)
• Your research topic and research methods
• Your hopes for this Consortium
• The main questions you would like to address in this Consortium.
• Letter of Recommendation (from primary thesis supervisor) – to be uploaded. 

Selection Process
‍The submitted applications will be reviewed and participants will be selected based on how their scholarly development will likely benefit from the DMC, which accounts for their areas of research within the field of HCI, intellectual viewpoints, and research stage.

Applicants who gain a place on the DMC will also be invited to co-author a paper to be submitted to the AfriCHI case studies track. The DMC Chairs will facilitate the paper which will focus on themes that emerge from our collective reflection on how students' postgraduate research and scholarship in HCI engage with African wisdom. We will consider opportunities and tensions that emerge about, for instance,  epistemic accountability, citational justice, liberation, relationality, positionality, and pluriversality. Participation in this activity is optional and students should discuss their involvement with their supervisors before responding to our invitation to work on the paper. Our invitation will also discuss relevant ethical guidelines and agree on criteria for authorship and author order.

NEW! We have re-opened submissions for a second round of DMC applicants. Due to the case study deadline, applicants in the second round will NOT be invited to co-author the paper for the case studies track. However, this second round provides an opportunity for those who were not able to meet the first deadline.

Financial Support
‍Unfortunately, we are not able to provide direct financial support for accepted applicants to attend the conference. You are encouraged to separately apply for conference travel scholarships (e.g. Google Conference Scholarships).

For those who are unable to attend in person, due to finances, visa issues, or other constraints, we will organize a virtual DMC online 2-3 weeks before the conference. There will not be a hybrid option.

Important Dates

Round 1
Submission Deadline: 15 February 2025
Decision about acceptance to the Doctoral and Masters Consortium: 15 March 2025
Co-authored submission to Case Studies track (facilitated): 5 April 2025
Participants to confirm they will attend:  30 May 2025

Round 2
Submission Deadline: 31 July 2025

Co-chairs/Facilitators
Melissa Densmore, Wanjiru Mburu and Nic Bidwell.
Email: doctoral-and-masters-consortia@africhi2025.org 

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