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, received the Rosenberg award in 2023. There was not a recipient in 2024.
We are grateful to Paolo Dettwiler, the sponsor of the 2025 Rosenberg Bluegrass Award. Our previous sponsors include Jon Weisberger and Trisha & Jon Tubbs (2023), Laurie Greenberg (2022), the John Hartford Family (2021), and Mary Tyler Doub (2019).
Dettwiler, director and manager of North-Western Switzerland Bluegrass & SwissGrass Productions, is a mandolin player who started performing with his father’s band, The Country Pickers, at age 17. A key figure in European Bluegrass, Paolo co-founded the Swiss Bluegrass Music Association (SBMA) in 1994 and initiated the European Bluegrass Network in 1995, which led to the formation of the European Bluegrass Music Association (EBMA). He served on the IBMA board of directors from 1998-2011, and he promoted bluegrass in his role as editor of SBMA’s newsletter and later as publisher of Bluegrass Europe magazine (1989-2011). Paolo holds an MA in History and English from Basel University and specializes in digital learning as a teacher at a business college.
The deadline to be considered for the 2025 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.
RETURN to the April 2025 issue of The Cornerstone.
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