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Prof Heike Winschiers-Theophilus

Heike Winschiers-Theophilus, is a Professor in Computer Science in the Faculty of Computing and Informatics at the Namibia University of Science and Technology, and a pioneer in co-designing technologies with indigenous and marginalised communities.

Heike Winschiers-Theophilus was born in Erlangen, Germany. Having moved from Germany, to the Netherlands, Tunisia (1978 – 1981) and Iraq (1981-1983) along with her parents and brother she returned to Germany to complete her Baccalaureate at the French military school in Freiburg in 1985. In the same year, not having turned 18 years yet, she started her studies of Computer Science at the University of Erlangen, where she completed her Vor-Diplom (Bachelor) in 1988. She then transferred to the University of Hamburg, where she specialized in Natural Language Processing, as part of her computer studies. She graduated with a Diplom (Master) in 1992, having presented a thesis on a functional specification of a knowledge-based machine aided translation system. In 1993 she worked as a research assistant on a Volkswagen funded German-Bulgarian Knowledge-Based Machine (aided) Translation project, a collaboration between the University of Hamburg and the University of Sofia in Bulgaria.

In 1994, she conceptualised a PhD topic which aimed to explore cross-cultural aspects of Software designing in Namibia. Considered to be a forward-thinking subject at the time, it was endorsed and supervised by Prof Christiane Floyd and funded by the Evangelisches Studienwerk Villigst. At this point Heike Winschiers-Theophilus moved to Namibia permanently and started working at the University of Namibia (UNAM) as a lecturer concurrently to her PhD studies. She graduated from the University of Hamburg in 2001 with a doctoral thesis entitled:

“Dialogical System Design Across Cultural Boundaries” (https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/7f2e/fae242dfbce14800acb6f11ecd7bb5ff58a4.pdf). Since 2001, she has been working at the Polytechnic of Namibia, now transformed to Namibia University of Science and Technology (NUST). She headed the Department of Software Engineering from 2006 to 2008 and then became the Dean of the School of Information Technology till 2012. She introduced the first Master Programme ever at the institute in 2005, of which the first graduate in 2006 was a woman. In 2008 she established a niche area research cluster aiming for the implementation of an Indigenous Knowledge Management System. She leads this research group consisting of staff members, PhD, Master and Honours students, several external international research collaborators, in partnership with local indigenous knowledge holders. The projects have been supported by a number of local, bilateral and international grants. In 2011 she co-chaired the inaugural Indigenous Knowledge Technology Conference, in Windhoek, to initiate a worldwide dialogue on the tensions in digital representation of Indigenous Knowledge.

In 2014 she co-chaired the 13th Participatory Design conference in Windhoek, Namibia hosted in Africa for the first time. She introduced local design challenges as a novel element to the conference whereby international participants collaborated with local citizens in deriving practical solutions. Concerned with socio-economic challenges in the country, such as the high youth unemployment rate, gender-based violence, reading cultures and general living conditions in the informal settlement, she has established a number of research-based community outreach projects contributing to societal transformation. She has piloted a community-enhanced learning and challenge-based approach to co-educate tertiary students and less-skilled youth and enhance entrepreneurial activities simultaneously. Promoting inclusive innovation, she is leading a local Tech Innovation Hub engaging indigenous and marginalised communities in the co-development of innovative tech products and processes for the mainstream market.

In 2018 she is technical co-chair for the 2 nd African Computer-Human Interaction Conference supporting thriving communities consisting of African, African-based academics as well as local communities engaged in technology design projects.

Research Her research focuses on the co-design with indigenous and marginalised communities. Based on a decade of empirical work, influenced by theoretical constructs such as afro-centricity and local instantiations of Ubuntu her research group has framed the concept of “community-based co-design” as a methodology. It promotes a dialogical participatory approach following principles of action research in the development of technologies with communities. Methodological and technical results have since been transferred to other continents. Heike Winschiers-Theophilus’s collaborative work with the Penan communities in Borneo island, Malaysian has yielded in three international research and innovation awards for digitally revitalising a secret sign language at the verge of extinction.

Her research work originated in the investigation of cross-cultural issues in human-computer- interaction (HCI), cultural appropriation of design and evaluation concepts and methods, representation and retrieval of indigenous knowledge, participatory design with rural communities, co-design of technologies supporting local content creation, storage. organisation and retrieval, co-design of technologies with marginalised youth and children. Her recent work has introduced a transcultural approach to community-based co-design.

Awards 1. 2016: National Researcher of the year, awarded by the National Commission on Research, Science and Technology, Windhoek, Namibia 2. 2016: National Scientist of the year, awarded by the National Commission on Research, Science and Technology, Windhoek, Namibia 3. 2015: IFIP Brian Shackel Award 2015, for the paper entitled “Penans&#39; Oroo&#39; Short Message Signs (PO-SMS): Co-design of a Digital Jungle Sign Language Application”. Awarded at INTERACT 2015, in Bamberg, Germany. In recognition of the most outstanding contribution with international impact, which draws attention to the need for a comprehensive human-centred approach in the design and use of information technology in which the human and social implications have been taken into account. 4. 2015: The Interaction Design for International Development Award 2015 for the paper titled “Penans&#39; Oroo&#39; Short Message Signs (PO-SMS): Co-design of a Digital Jungle Sign Language Application”. Awarded at INTERACT 2015, in Bamberg, Germany. In recognition of the most outstanding contribution to the application of interactive systems for social and economic development of people in developing countries. 5. 2015: Gold Medal for Invention of “Digitalising and preserving Oroo&#39;, a secret sign language of the nomadic Penans&#39; in the rainforest” awarded at UNIMAS R\&amp;D Expo 2015, 14th-15th of April 2015, Malaysia 6. 2015: Bronze Medal for the project “Digitalising and preserving Oroo&#39;, a secret sign language of the nomadic Penans in the rainforest” awarded at iENA International Trade Fair Ideas- Inventions-New Products, Nürnberg, 29 October -- 1 November 2015, Germany 7. 2015: Faculty Researcher of the Year 2015. Faculty of Computing and Informatics. Namibia University of Science and Technology 8. 2011: School Researcher of the Year 2011. School of Information Technology. Polytechnic of Namibia} 9. 2010: Best Paper Award: Heike Winschiers-Theophilus, Nicola J Bidwell, Shilumbe Chivuno-Kuria, Gereon Koch Kapuire. “Determining Requirements within an Indigenous Knowledge System of African Rural Communities”. Proceedings of SAICSIT 2010. Pretoria, South Africa

Selected Publications 1. Winschiers-Theophilus, H., Bidwell, N., Blake, E., Chivuno-Kuria, S., Kapuire, G. (2010) Being participated: a community approach, in Proceedings of the Participatory Design Conference 2010, Sydney, Australia, 2010. ACM. 2. Kapuire, G., Winschiers-Theophilus, H., Blake, E. (2015) An insider perspective on community gains: A subjective account of a Namibian rural communities&#39; perception of a long-term participatory design project. International Journal of Human Computer Studies. 74, 124-143 doi:10.1016/j.ijhcs.2014.10.004 3. Bidwell, N., Winschiers-Theophilus, H. (Eds.). (2015) At the Intersection of Indigenous and Traditional Knowledge and Technology Design. Informing Science Press. ISBN-10: 1932886990. http://informingscience.net/ocart/index.php?route=product/product&amp;product_id=135 4. Zaman, T., Winschiers-Theophilus, H. (2015) Penan&#39;s Oroo&#39; Short Message Signs (PO-SMS): Co- design of a Digital Jungle Sign Language Application. Human-Computer Interaction – INTERACT 2015, Volume 9297 of the series Lecture Notes in Computer Science pp 489-504. Springer Publishing. doi: 10.1007/978-3- 319-22668- 2_38 5. Winschiers-Theophilus, H., Zaman, T., Stanley, C., (2017) A classification of cultural engagements in community technology design: introducing a transcultural approach in AI &amp; SOCIETY 1-17, 2017 6. Winschiers-Theophilus, H., Cabrero, D., Chivuno-Kuria, S., Mendonca,H, Angula, S., Onwordi, L., (2017) Promoting entrepreneurship amid youth in Windhoek’s informal settlements: a Namibian case, Science, Technology and Society 22 (2), 350-366

https://www.amazon.com/Digitisation-Culture-Namibian-International-Perspectives/dp/9811076960 http://www.ncrst.na/news/156/Congratulations-to-the-Winners-of-the-RSTI-Awards-2016/ http://www.telecom.na/index.php/media-centre/news?start=30 https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/scm_conf/17/ http://www.archive.unimas.my/institutes/isiti/index.php/talks-seminars/item/116-a-namibian-design-journey-towards-local-appropriation-of-design-and-evaluation-by-prof-dr-heike-winschiers-theophilus http://icenter.ncrst.na/Lists/Awards/DispForm.aspx?ID=1