Motsusi Nare, a PhD student in the University of the Free State (UFS) Department of English, has made a significant mark on the global academic landscape by successfully completing the prestigious Distant Reading World Literatures course at Uppsala University in Sweden. Nare’s participation stresses the department's commitment to cutting-edge research and interdisciplinary collaboration, particularly in the evolving field of digital humanities.

Unpacking a new approach to literature

"Completing the 'Distant Reading World Literatures' course was incredibly rewarding," says Nare. He explains that distant reading, a concept popularised by Franco Moretti, moves away from analysing individual texts. Instead, it uses digital tools to uncover large-scale patterns across vast numbers of literary works. "This approach helps reveal overlooked cultural texts and rethink literary value beyond the traditional canon," he adds.

While Nare's UFS training focused on close reading, especially in postcolonial ecologies of African novels, this course significantly expanded his methodological toolkit. He gained practical skills in metadata curation, text mining, and network analysis. These skills are directly applicable to his contribution to ALMEDA (African Literary Metadata), a Horizon Europe-funded project reimagining literary metadata from an African perspective. Nare emphasises that distant reading complements, rather than replaces, close reading, opening new avenues for critical questions about literature and global storytelling.

The sole African representative

Nare was the only South African and indeed the only African student selected for this highly competitive course. "It was honestly surreal and really humbling to find out on the first day of orientation that I was the only one from the African continent selected, especially given the high number of applicants," he shares, crediting his department's strong support, including a thoughtful letter from his supervisor.

Invaluable insights for PhD research

Under the guidance of Prof Ashleigh Harris, the course immersed participants in advanced digital humanities methods with a critical focus on world literature. Nare particularly valued the opportunity to work with an expansive range of cultural texts – from traditional novels and poetry to newer digital forms such as Twitterature, Instapoetry, hypertext fiction, and fan fiction. He learned to collect, annotate, and catalogue literary materials for digital databases. The course also covered big data approaches, gaps in commercial metadata systems, and the basics of Linked Open Data and the Semantic Web – all crucial for expanding literary research in digital environments.

This training proved highly relevant to his PhD research, titled Ecological Precarity and Neoliberal Violence in Contemporary African Novels. Nare explains, "What made the course particularly valuable was that it allowed me to situate my focused literary analysis within a much broader data set of cultural texts, often engaging with hundreds of works at a time." This widened scope enabled him to detect overlapping thematic patterns, recurring plot structures, shared character tropes, and ecological motifs through curated metadata, deepening his appreciation of how African literature connects with global literary flows while retaining its unique environmental and political urgency.

A global classroom and local application

Although offered by Uppsala University in Sweden, the course was conducted entirely online. Nare participated from the UFS Qwaqwa Campus, crediting the strong Wi-Fi support from the ICT team for a smooth remote learning experience. He collaborated closely with classmates from France and England, building a strong dynamic despite never meeting in person.

Nare is already applying his new digital humanities skills locally. He initiated a student-produced podcasting project on the @UFSQwaqwaEnglish3 YouTube channel, where podcasting serves as an alternative assessment for third-year students. This project demonstrates how global digital methods can be adapted to local pedagogical contexts.

His current research also focuses on digital cultural production, including a recently published data set, African Games: 2023-2025, tracking video games developed across the African continent. This project revealed South Africa's centrality in African game development, signalling the country’s growing presence in global cultural production. Nare emphasises that all forms of cultural production – novels, music, video games, memes, or podcasts – are interconnected, reflecting how stories are told, and identities are shaped.

Advice for aspiring PhD students

For other PhD students in the Faculty of The Humanities considering similar international opportunities, Nare highlights their growing importance. "Within our discipline, the rise of digital humanities has opened up new ways of doing research," he advises. He encourages fellow PhD students to explore initiatives such as the Interdisciplinary Centre for Digital Futures (ICDF) at the UFS, noting that such proximity can help make scholarship more socially attuned and future-facing.

Nare concludes by stating, "The Global South has so much to offer in shaping digital futures, and international programmes help us amplify these contributions while anchoring our work in the local contexts that give it meaning."