Neil Rosenberg Bluegrass Scholar Award Grant

Neil Rosenberg Bluegrass Scholar Award Grant

Status: ACTIVE
Funder: The Ibma Foundation Inc
Amount: US $1,000
Last Updated: March 25, 2026

Summary

The Neil Rosenberg Bluegrass Scholar Award, presented by the IBMA Foundation, recognizes emerging academic scholars who deliver exceptional research on bluegrass music at juried conferences. Recipients earn a $500 honorarium and entry to the IBMA Business Conference and Awards Show. This award honors Neil Rosenberg, a prominent bluegrass historian, and aims to support graduate students and recent PhDs in their scholarly endeavors, promoting the preservation and study of bluegrass culture.

Overview

Our Story The IBMA Foundation was created by the International Bluegrass Music Association in 2007 with a bequest from the Richard Barnhart estate. Mr. Barnhart was a musician from northern Virginia who loved bluegrass and wanted to support educational programs for children. Since the beginning, our goal has been to support bluegrass-music-related educational, literary, artistic and historic preservation activities. In our early years we produced Discover Bluegrass, an educational video that has been used in thousands of classrooms and libraries around the world. We have hosted dozens of teacher workshops and artist trainings. We created a bluegrass lesson plan competition and provided a network for leaders of after-school bluegrass programs. The Neil Rosenberg Bluegrass Scholar Award The Neil Rosenberg Bluegrass Scholar Award is an annual cash award, presented to the developing academic scholar who presents the best paper accepted by a juried academic conference on an aspect of bluegrass music. The recipient will receive a $500 honorarium plus admission to the next IBMA Business Conference and Awards Show. “Developing academic scholars” eligible for this award are defined as graduate students in MA or PhD programs and recent PhDs (within five years of degree completion). The committee tasked with overseeing the Rosenberg Bluegrass Scholarship Award process is headed by a committee chaired by Dr. Ben Krakhauer at Warren Wilson College. The “IBMA Academic Prize” (as it was then known) was presented in 2011 to Krakauer when he was working on his docorate. The IBMA Foundation took responsibility for the award in 2018, re-naming it in honor of renowned bluegrass music historian, author and Bluegrass Hall of Fame member Neil Rosenberg.

Eligibility

You can learn more about this opportunity by visiting the funder's website.