2025 Richard Deswarte Prize in Digital History
We are delighted to announce that the 2025 Richard Deswarte Prize in Digital History is awarded to Marly Terwisscha van Scheltinga, Sara Budts, and Jeroen Puttevils (University of Antwerp) for their article ‘(Fe)male Voices on Stage: Finding Patterns in Lottery Rhymes of the Late Medieval and Early Modern Low Countries with and without AI’ (BMGN – Low Countries Historical Review, 2024).
In a special lunchtime seminar on 4 November, the authors will join the IHR Digital History Seminar to discuss their prize winning entry. Details of how to join the seminar are available here.
The judging panel recognised the articles’s sophisticated interpretation of a complex source base, as well as their use of innovative methodological approach women’s history. Peter Webster, chair of the panel, said:
In its fourth year, the entries for the Deswarte Prize once again showed the vitality and diversity of the field, and the ever-shifting boundaries of what we call ‘digital history’. The judges were impressed by entries from Luca Scholz (a timely and far-reaching call for a reorientation of spatial history), and from Martin Paul Eve, inviting scholars really to attend to the metaphors that have shaped our understanding of the digital. But the judges were most impressed by the winning entry, which opened up a long-known source for medieval and early modern social history in a wholly new way, overcoming linguistic obstacles in an exemplary use of a language model to drive forward the scholarly argument. Once again it was my pleasure to chair the panel; Richard would, I am sure, have been delighted to see the prize going on in strength.
We thank all that nominated entries for the prize, and our international panel of expert judges. The 2026 edition of the prize will launch early in the new year.
Richard Deswarte (1965-2021) was one of the founding convenors of the Digital History seminar at the Institute of Historical Research (IHR), University of London, an advocate for the value and importance of digital history, and an irreplaceable member of the community of digital historians in the UK and beyond.
This annual prize, established in his memory, celebrates the best of digital history internationally. It offers an award of £500 for the best output in digital history published in the 17 months prior to the submission deadline. More information on the prize is available here.
