About — Sankofie

Digital Homing

The African Digital Homing Platform is a digital space designed to support people of African descent in engaging with the African continent through history, culture, memory, storytelling, and community interaction. The platform approaches “home” not simply as a physical place, but as an ongoing process of reconnection and cultural belonging that can also exist within digital spaces. Through maps, timelines, archives, oral histories, music, food, tourism, and cultural heritage, the platform creates opportunities for diasporic communities to encounter and engage with Africa in interactive and meaningful ways. The platform also functions as a community-centered digital archive that preserves stories and experiences connected to the African diaspora and the continent. By allowing users to contribute narratives, the project creates a living and collaborative space shaped by the people engaging with it. At its core, the Digital Homing Platform seeks to foster reconnection, rediscovery, cultural continuity, and a deeper relationship between the African diaspora and the continent through digital technology and storytelling.

About Me

Benjamin Ashley is completing a Master’s degree in English with a concentration in Rhetoric, Writing, and Linguistics at the University of Tennessee and will begin a PhD in Composition and Cultural Rhetorics at Syracuse University. His research focuses on African digital humanities, cultural rhetorics, archives, diaspora studies, and digital storytelling, with particular interest in how digital spaces can foster reconnection between the African diaspora and the African continent. His projects explore themes of memory, return, cultural identity, and rememory through interactive media, timelines, mapping, and community-centered digital archives. The Digital Homing Platform reflects these interests by creating a space where diasporic communities can engage with African histories, cultures, and stories through collaborative and immersive digital experiences.