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Augustine A. Farinola

Augustine A. Farinola

University of Alberta
Website  (external link) 
LinkedIn  (external link) 

Visiting Toronto Metropolitan University

March 2026

Augustine A. Farinola is a Graduate Research Assistant at the University of Alberta, with appointments in the Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry and in Media & Technology Studies. He holds a BA in Philosophy (First Class Honours) and an MA in Philosophy of Science and Technology from the University of Ibadan, Nigeria, and is currently pursuing doctoral research at the University of Alberta. His work sits at the intersection of digital humanities, philosophy of technology, and AI ethics, with particular interests in computational text analysis, migration discourse, and the responsible use of advanced digital technologies. Over the past decade, he has developed a range of digital projects, including Visual Epistemology Gallery, Philos-DH Lab, MindScape – AI Ethics Game, AfricanPedia, StoryChain, and ADH-Lab. His current research examines artificial intelligence, migrant integration, and the ethical implications of advanced digital technologies. He is affiliated with the Bridging Divides program at Toronto Metropolitan University, where he contributes to the Citizenship and Participation theme.

Research focus while a Bridging Divides Scholar Exchange Fellow:

At Bridging Divides UofA Lab, Augustine Farinola focuses on building and applying digital research infrastructure for studying immigration governance, discourse, and migrant experiences in Canada. Working with Prof. Geoffrey Rockwell and Prof. Yasmeen Abu-Laban, he contributes to research on YouTube immigration discourse analytics and the algorithmic assessment of AI deployment across different phases of migrant integration. His work also connects with projects that use computational and AI-assisted methods to make complex immigration-related materials more searchable, interpretable, and useful for research and teaching. These include ImRAG, which supports grounded exploration of immigration policy and legal materials; BridgeQuest, which uses interactive simulation to examine ethical and policy trade-offs across the migrant lifecycle; the Canadian Immigration Dashboard (CID), which enables exploration of immigration-related data and discourse trends; and A Bilingual Corpus Study of Canadian AIA, which supports analysis of Canada’s Algorithmic Impact Assessment framework through structured corpus methods. Collectively, this work advances ethically informed and interdisciplinary approaches to migration research, public participation, and automated governance.

 

Relevant Publications

Farinola, A., Abu-Laban, Y. and Rockwell, G. (2026, forthcoming). “AI-Driven Textual Analysis to Decode Canadian Immigration Social Media Discourse.” Manuscript submitted for peer review to Digital Studies / Le champ numérique.

Farinola, A., Rockwell, G. and Khemka, A. (2025). “The Voyant Consortium: Fostering Community, Engagement, and Learning in Digital Humanities.” Presented at the MSU Global Digital Humanities Symposium 2025, Virtual, 25 March

Farinola, A. (2023). “Hermeneutical postphenomenology: Computational tools and the lure of objectivity.” Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, 38(3), 1078–1087.

 

Digital Projects and URLs