Overview | Recipients | Protocol
Eligibility
A winner of a Lisa Lena Opas-Hänninen Young Scholar Prize must be a student, graduate student, or a postdoctoral researcher who has contributed in a significant way to scholarship at a humanities conference using digital technology essentially. She or he cannot be a scholar with an academic position, whether tenured or untenured. Further, previous winners of the Lisa Lena Opas-Hänninen Young Scholar Prize are not eligible. Papers, poster, software demonstrations, and other scholarly contributions may be considered, and the selection of the prizes should rest with experts in humanities and digital humanities.
Selection
The selection of winners takes place in two steps. First one or two conferences are selected for the prizes of a given year, and then winners are selected within the contributors to the conferences. The Awards Committee announces the availability of the prizes on the ADHO web site and through other relevant channels asking that proposals for a given year be submitted by October 1 of the preceding year. Individual members of any ADHO constituent organization may submit proposals to the Awards Committee chair by October 1 for conferences taking place in the following year. Individual members are encouraged (but not required) to seek the endorsement of a constituent organization.
Proposals should clarify why the conference is likely to include contributions to digital humanities, whether innovative digital humanities is to be expected, for example in a sub-discipline where digital techniques have not been popular, and how the prize winner is to be selected at the conference. Special consideration should be given to proposals that encourage a diverse pool of applicants, addressing matters of cultural, linguistic, ethnic, and gender diversity. Proposals may ask for funding for one or two prizes and, additionally, a reception at which the prizes are awarded, and at which the background of the prizes should be explained.
The proposal should identify the conferences (dates, venue, web site), the sort of contribution which is to be recognized (paper, poster, etc.), how the winner or winners are to be selected, who will present the award and explain its background, and the total budget. The budget may not exceed € 1,500 in total if two prizes are to be awarded or € 750 if one prize is to be awarded. The budget includes €500 to each winner to defray the costs of travel, lodging and conference registration and up to € 250 (one prize) or € 500 (two prizes) for a reception. The awards committee selects the single best proposal for awarding the prize(s) at a given conference, considering where digital humanities is likely to be seriously represented, where new forays in digital humanities might be expected, and giving preference to proposals from constituent organizations that have not awarded a Lisa Lena prize recently.
Before November 1 the award committee determines which proposal, i.e., which conference will have the opportunity to award the prize(s), funding one proposal for one or two prizes, or, in exceptional years, two proposals for one prize each.
This means that the ADHO awards committee selects a proposal for a given conference, but not the concrete prize winners, who will normally be selected locally, i.e. at the conference. Award committee member in attendance at the conference should be considered for participation in the selection board, but there is no strict requirement for such participation.
Status
This document is based on the decision of the ADHO Steering Committee (now Constituent Organization Board) at October 29, 2013. It constitutes a proposal accepted by Awards Committee and forwarded to the ADHO SC Chair February 13, 2014.
Terms
The organizers of the conference selected for a given year’s prize will receive maximum € 1,500 (for two prizes) or €750 (for one prize) from ADHO upon documentation of expenditure as outlined in the selection criteria. There will be no transfer of funds directly from ADHO to prize winners, but the award committee will require that the conference organization accepting the prize funds report back on the prize winner(s), including their names, the titles of their contributions, and their professional status.
The Constituent Organization Board approves the availability of funds for conferences in the five years 2014 through 2018. At the summer executive committee meeting of 2018 a decision shall be made whether to continue thisprogram.