The Roberto Busa Prize is an award of the Alliance of Digital Humanities Organisations (ADHO). It is named in honour of Father Roberta Busa (b. 1913 the first pioneer of humanities computing, who in 1949 began experiments in linguistic automation as part of his research on the writings of Thomas Aquinas. This computational work was central to publication of the 56-volume Index Thomisticus, completed in 1980. The Busa award is given to recognise outstanding lifetime achievements in the application of information and communications technologies to humanities research. The award is given every three years, alternating with other ADHO awards, such as the Zampolli award.
The first award was given to Father Busa himself in 1998. Subsequent winners have been: 2001, John Burrows; 2004, Susan Hockey; 2007, Wilhelm Ott; 2010, Joe Raben; and 2013, Willard McCarty.
The next Busa Award will be given at the DH conference in 2016. The Award Committee now invites nominations. Nominations may be made by anyone with an interest in humanities computing and neither nominee nor nominator has to be a member of any ADHO Constituent Organisation. Nominators should give some account of the nominee’s work and the reasons it is felt to be an outstanding contribution to the field. A list of bibliographic references to the nominee’s work is desirable. Nominators are welcome to resubmit updated versions of nominations submitted in previous years.
The recipient of the award receives 1500 GBP and is expected to give a keynote or plenary lecture (on a topic of their choice) at the 2016 Digital Humanities conference. ADHO will host the recipient as a guest of honour for the conference at which the Prize is awarded and the lecture given-this means that all travel, accommodation and subsistence costs of the Prize recipient will be paid by the Alliance.
Nominations should be emailed to Hugh Craig (Chair of the 2016 Busa Award Committee; hugh.craig[at]newcastle.edu.au) no later than October 1, 2014. The winner of the Award will be announced at the 2015 meeting and awarded at the 2016 meeting.
More information about the award can be found on the ADHO web site: http://www.digitalhumanities.org/awards/BusaPrize.