The American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) has received a $3.3 million grant from the Mellon Foundation to continue its Digital Justice Grant Program for an additional three cycles. The program supports digital projects in the humanities and social sciences that focus on historically marginalized communities and addresses inequities in access to tools and support for digital work among scholars. The new iteration of the program will also fund capacity-building efforts, including pedagogical projects that train students in digital humanities methods, publicly engaged projects that develop new technological infrastructure with community partners, and trans-institutional projects that connect scholars across academic and cultural heritage institutions.
As mentioned in a news article on a recent press release from PRNewswire, the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) has been awarded a $3.3 million grant by the Mellon Foundation to continue its Digital Justice Grant Program. The extension grant will support the program for an additional three competition cycles, beginning with the next competition which will start accepting applications in September 2023.
Launched in 2021, the ACLS Digital Justice Grant Program supports digital projects across the humanities and interpretative social sciences that engage with the interests and histories of people of color and other historically marginalized communities. Specifically, the program addresses persistent inequities in access to tools and support for digital work among these scholars, those working with non-traditional materials, and those based at higher education institutions with fewer res available to support humanists working with digital techniques.
This new iteration of the program will also seek to fund projects that engage in capacity building efforts, including but not limited to: pedagogical projects that train students in digital humanities methods as a key feature of the project’s content building practice; publicly engaged projects that develop new technological infrastructure with community partners; and trans-institutional projects that connect scholars across academic and cultural heritage institutions.
“The ACLS Digital Justice Grant Program provides critical support and res to scholars in fields that challenge the historical legacies of settler colonialism, racial capitalism, and heteronormativity,” said Keyanah Nurse, ACLS Program Officer for Higher Education Initiatives. “These grants stimulate more inclusivity within digital humanities by extending the opportunity to a broader assemblage of scholars and projects, many of whom navigate weak infrastructural support. With an added emphasis on capacity building, we hope this new iteration gives reviewers a more nuanced understanding of the contexts in which these projects are developed and sustained.”
The ACLS Digital Justice Grant Program has already supported a number of innovative projects. For example, the 2022 ACLS Digital Justice Seed Grantees worked on a podcast for their project “Building an Institute for Empathic Immersive Narrative” at Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University. This project aimed to create a platform for storytelling that promotes empathy and understanding across diverse communities.
The Mellon Foundation’s continued support for the ACLS Digital Justice Grant Program is a testament to the importance of digital humanities work that engages with historically marginalized communities. By providing res and support to scholars working in these fields, the program aims to address persistent inequities in access to digital tools and infrastructure. With the next competition cycle set to begin in September 2023, the ACLS Digital Justice Grant Program will continue to support innovative projects that challenge dominant narratives and promote inclusivity within the digital humanities.
