Tsosheletso Chidi
[UP] [ML] [NLP] [Soc]
I am a linguistic researcher, multilingual writer, poet, and literary curator. My research focuses on the role of indigenous languages in shaping social order and their digital preservation. My literary work has been featured in several publications, and I curated the 2024 Time of the Writer Festival. I am dedicated to empowering emerging writers and actively engage in community development by mentoring youth and women through creative writing programmes. I hold a PhD in African Languages from the University of Pretoria and a Master of Arts degree in Creative Writing from Rhodes University. I am the 2023/2024 Elinor Ostrom Fellow at the Mercatus Center based at George Mason University and the 2024/2025 Chevening Clore Leadership Fellow. Currently, I am a research fellow at DFSI, where my research focuses on bridging the digital divide between high-resourced and low-resourced languages. I explore how machine learning and natural language processing can dismantle the marginalisation of African languages in the global space, ensuring their inclusion in digital and technological advancements.