The Neil Rosenberg Bluegrass Scholar Award annually recognizes the best bluegrass-related paper accepted by a juried academic conference during the previous year. Developing academic scholars eligible for this award include graduate students in MA or PhD programs and recent PhDs (within five years of degree completion). The award’s name honors Bluegrass Hall of Fame member Neil V. Rosenberg, PhD, a noted bluegrass author and historian.
The objective of this award is to grow the academic awareness of bluegrass music by encouraging developing academic scholars to present research of high quality to fellow scholars on any aspect of the genre. The recipient of the Rosenberg Bluegrass Scholar Award, to be announced in early August, will receive a $500 honorarium plus admission to the next IBMA Business Conference and Awards Show.
The first IBMA Academic Prize (as it was then known) was presented in 2011 to Benjamin Krakauer, PhD, who now teaches on the faculty of Warren Wilson College. The IBMA Foundation took responsibility for the award in 2018, renaming it in honor of Neil Rosenberg. The 2019 recipient was Jordan Laney, PhD, at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia. The award was not presented in 2020 because academic conferences were cancelled during the COVID pandemic. The 2021 recipient was Heather Grimm, a PhD candidate in the interdisciplinary theatre/drama department at Northwestern University, and the 2022 winner was Gabby Cameron, MA, an ethnomusicology student at the University of Maryland. Cade Botts, who graduated with a master’s degree in music theory from the University of Tennessee-Knoxville in May, 2023, received the Rosenberg award last year.
We are grateful to the following sponsors of the Rosenberg Bluegrass Scholar Award: Jon Weisberger and Trisha & Jon Tubbs (2023), Laurie Greenberg (2022), the John Hartford Family (2021), and Mary Tyler Doub (2019).
The deadline to be considered for the 2024 Rosenberg Bluegrass Scholarship Award from the IBMA Foundation is June 30. Entries may be emailed to review committee chair Ben Krakauer, PhD, at bkrakauer@warren-wilson.edu. Dr. Krakauer is chair of the music department at Warren Wilson College in Swannanoa, North Carolina, and was the first recipient of the Rosenberg Scholar Award.
RETURN to the May 2024 issue of The Cornerstone.
Photo above: Cade Botts, 2023 recipient of the Rosenberg Bluegrass Scholar Award
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