2026 DELAMAN Award

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We are excited to announce that nominations for the 2026 DELAMAN Award are now being accepted!

The Prize

The DELAMAN Award consists of

  1. A $500 USD cash prize from DELAMAN;
  2. An automatic slot for a standard presentation at the 3rd Language Documentation & Archiving conference in Berlin, Germany, in September 2026, where the prize will be awarded; and
  3. Travel and accommodations for one person to travel to Berlin for the conference.

Eligibility

The DELAMAN Award recognizes and honours early-career documenters who have done outstanding documentary work in creating and archiving a rich multimedia documentary collection of a particular language that is endangered or no longer spoken. “Early-career” is defined as:

  1. a university-based documenter with a Ph.D. awarded 01 January 2020 or later; OR
  2. a non-university-based documenter who has been employed by or affiliated with a community-based language project since no earlier than 01 January 2020.

To be eligible, the language documentation collection must be archived and made accessible in a DELAMAN archive with no or only minimal access restrictions, and it must provide rich audio and video documentation, comprehensive metadata, and explanatory material or guides, as well as transcription, translation and annotation of a subset of the AV collection.

If an entire team of documenters is nominated, all nominees must meet this definition of “early-career.” If an entire team wins the award, the team members must split the cash prize and select one member to receive the travel and accommodations part of the award to represent the team at the Language Documentation & Archiving conference in Berlin, Germany, in September 2026.

Self-nomination is permitted and encouraged.

Important Dates

  • 15 May 2025: Call for nominations
  • 02 November 2025: Nomination deadline
  • Mid-March 2026: Nominee notifications sent
  • Late-March 2026: Public announcement of the winner
  • September 2026: Award presented at the Language Documentation & Archiving conference, Berlin, Germany

Nomination Process

Application Materials

The application materials include the following items, which are described in more detail below:

  1. The nominee’s CV (required)
  2. A written guide to the collection (required)
  3. A short video presentation/walk-through of the collection (optional)

Nominee’s Curriculum Vitae (CV) – Required

The CV should be a summary of the nominee’s education, community or research projects, and career to date, etc. There is no page limit for this document. Please provide a link to view and download the document.

If an entire team is nominated, please submit a link to the CV for each team member.

Written Collection Guide – Required

The major component of the nomination is a written guide to the collection, which has a limit of 2000 words or 4 pages single spaced. Consider this to be a first draft for a collection description article that you can expand and submit to a journal (e.g., Language Documentation & Conservation) for publication. As an example, please see Florian’s Lionnet’s guide to the Laal corpus in the DoBeS Archive. Your written collection guide should include the following required information:

  1. Statement on the state of the language’s vitality/endangerment. 
  2. Statement on the amount of previously existing documentation and/or resources for this language.
  3. Name of the funder(s) of the project. If the project was self-funded, please indicate this.
  4. Description of the project team, including the nominee, and the role each person played in the work, including who was responsible for archiving the collection. Preference will be given to nominee’s who were involved in the archiving process.
  5. If the collection is part of a larger group project, clearly indicate which part of the collection was created by the nominee. 
  6. Description of the level and type of community involvement and engagement.
  7. Explanation of the structure/organization of the archived collection (e.g., if transcriptions are separated from corresponding audio/video recordings, provide links to match up some examples for review).
  8. Explanation of how much of the collection is restricted; if any part is restricted, explain why and give the details of restrictions (e.g., to whom; plans for opening; conditions of access; etc.).
  9. Explanation of the orthography used in transcriptions or a link to a document in the collection that contains the explanation, including page number where the explanation can be found.
  10. List of abbreviations used in transcriptions or a link to a document in the collection that contains the explanation, including page number where the explanation can be found.
  11. If there is a lexicon/dictionary in the collection, please provide the link; if not, explain why there is not one.
  12. If there is a (sketch or complete) grammar in the collection, please provide the link; if not, explain why there is not one.
  13. Describe and link three to five gems of the collection, i.e., things that you are particularly excited for the Award Committee members to see and evaluate.

Video Presentation – Optional

You may also prepare an OPTIONAL video presentation (maximum 15 minutes) that gives a walk-through or demonstration of the collection for the DELAMAN Award Committee. This should be hosted on your preferred video sharing service (e.g., YouTube, Vimeo) and include edited or corrected closed captions in English. Using a video sharing site like YouTube or Vimeo will eliminate buffering or downloading issues associated with hosting the video in cloud-based file storage. Please note that the video is not a requirement; not submitting a video will not count against your application. However, submitting a video might help you to demonstrate aspects of the information that might not come across in the written document. As an example, please see Andrew Harvey’s overview presentation of the Gorwaa Language and Cultural Material Archive (note, however, that your video should be much shorter than this one, and its intended audience should be the DELAMAN Award Committee). 

Nomination Form

Please compile all of the required and optional application materials before you submit the nomination. Once all application materials are compiled, please use the nomination form to submit the materials for review. The form will request the following information (an asterisk indicates a required response):

  • * Name & email of Nominee; 
  • * Name & email of Nominator; 
  • * Name of the DELAMAN archive where the collection is located;
  • * Title of Collection; 
  • * The URL, DOI or other Persistent Identifier for the collection; 
  • * Language(s) documented in the collection, including ISO 639-3 code(s); 
  • * Link to view/download the Nominee’s CV;
  • * Link to view/download the written collection guide; and 
  • Link to view optional video demonstration of the collection.

The Nomination form will close at 23:59 HST (UTC-10) on 02 November 2025.

Previous Awardees

2017: Sonja Riesberg
2019: Michael Franjieh – see the written guide here: http://hdl.handle.net/10125/24849.
2021: Karolina Grzech – see the collection at ELAR: http://hdl.handle.net/2196/00-0000-0000-000C-F5FB-A