With the Digital Preservation Awards ceremony just ONE day away, our “Meet the Finalists: Digital Preservation Awards 2026” video series concludes with the three finalists for the Award for the Most Distinguished Student Work in Digital Preservation.
Sponsored by the Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC), this award recognizes student contributions to digital preservation. Through two videos and a blog post, Alice Thacker, Manuela Pallotto Strickland and Rosa Methol introduce their dissertations and the questions behind their research.
Meet the three outstanding finalists:
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Alice Thacker, King’s College London — A Digitisation Strategy For Cornish Historical Sources: Alice explores how digitizing Cornish historical collections could make them more widely accessible and support education, cultural identity and the revival of the Cornish language.
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Manuela Pallotto Strickland, Aberystwyth University — Preserving ‘Research Objects’ – Challenges and Requirements: Manuela investigates what it takes to preserve digital Research Objects as usable records of scientific studies, examining the software, data and metadata needed to support their future reuse.
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Rosa Méthol, University of Liverpool — The ethical implications of introducing FRT into archival metadata description and catalogue search for photographic and audiovisual collections: Drawing on published research and discussions with archivists, Rosa examines how facial recognition technology could improve access to archive collections while raising ethical questions about privacy and consent.
Watch Alice and Manuela introduce their dissertations in the video below, and read Rosa’s blog to learn about her research.
Organized by the DPC, the Digital Preservation Awards are the leading international celebration of achievement in digital preservation. The Awards recognize the people, projects, and organizations making outstanding contributions to securing our digital legacy.
The winner will be revealed at the Awards ceremony in Warsaw on Thursday 15 October 2026, hosted by FINA as part of the No Time to Wait 10 conference. Join the celebrations online from 16:00–17:15 UTC (18:00–19:15 in Warsaw), with the livestream available on the Digital Preservation Awards page on the day.
Explore our finalist video series and join us in celebrating their achievements as we count down to the ceremony!