The Roberto Busa Prize is an award of the Alliance of Digital Humanities Organisations (ADHO). It is named in honour of Father Roberto Busa, the first pioneer of humanities computing, who in 1949 began experiments in linguistic automation, with the support of the IBM offices in New York and Milan, as part of his analytical research on the writings of Thomas Aquinas. The computational work was central to the thirty years of research whose published output was 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 John Burrows (2001 Susan Hockey (2004 Wilhelm Ott (2007 Joe Raben (2010 Willard McCarty (2013 and Helen Agüera (2016).
The Busa Award Committee invites nominations for the 2019 Prize. Nominations should include a letter outlining the nominee's lifetime achievements and explaining how they constitute an outstanding contribution to the field. A bibliographic list of nominee's work, while not mandatory, would be welcome. Neither nominators nor nominees need be members of ADHO's constituent organisations.
Nominations should be emailed to Constance Crompton, Chair of the Busa Awards Committee, at ccrompto@uottawa.ca by October 1, 2017. Nominees will be welcome to submit updates to the nomination in the fall of 2017. The winner will be announced at DH2018 and will receive the award at DH2019.
The recipient of the award receives 2000 Euros and is expected to give a keynote or plenary lecture (on a topic of their choice) at the 2019 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.