Now in its third year, the Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Innovation Fellowship Program supports emerging scholars as they pursue bold and innovative research in the humanities and interpretive social sciences. Intended to intervene at the formative stage of dissertation development, the fellowship provides support and uninterrupted research time for emerging scholars for an academic year.
These fellowships support dissertation projects that expand the traditional boundaries of doctoral research through new methodologies, innovative dissertation formats, and collaborations with partners within and beyond the academy. The program also encourages the expansion of a fellow’s advisory network with a stipend for an external mentor, selected based on their capacity to offer critical perspective and expertise on the fellow’s project.
In addition to pursuing pathbreaking scholarship on their specific topics, their innovative approaches help effect change in doctoral education. Their success in promoting new methodologies and research formats will help all fields transform the ways they conceive of scholarship and challenge them to think creatively and expansively about what constitutes training for future PhDs. Recently, 2023 Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Innovation Fellows Jessica R. Locklear, Andreina Malki, and Ayaan Natala reflected on their fellowship experiences, in which they conducted exciting new research on underrepresented communities and histories across the United States.
Jessica R. Locklear’s research focuses on the history of Lumbee migrations from their tribal homelands in southeastern North Carolina.
Locklear approached this project with the desire to shed light on how diasporic Lumbees maintain their distinct Indigenous identity. However, she soon realized that the Lumbee people are often underrepresented or obscured in archival collections, forcing her to think critically about what innovative research methodologies she would need to employ.
“In order to address this challenge, I have used the Dissertation Innovation Fellowship as an opportunity to document and collect materials from Lumbee community members about their migration experiences,” said Locklear. “Having conversations with different individuals has allowed me to reframe my dissertation in a way that prioritizes the questions and stories that Lumbee people themselves find productive and valuable.”
Locklear pivoted to community-centered research and has carried out oral history interviews that are being used in her project. Much of this work has been modeled after that of her mentor, Ashley Minner Jones, a community-based visual artist from Baltimore, MD, whose own work focuses on preserving the history of the Lumbee community in Baltimore.
In reflecting on her fellowship year, Locklear notes, “I have been encouraged to think critically about research methodologies within the discipline of history and ways that I, as an Indigenous historian, can challenge preconceived notions of what successful academic research looks like.”
I have been encouraged to think critically about research methodologies within the discipline of history and ways that I, as an Indigenous historian, can challenge preconceived notions of what successful academic research looks like. Jessica R. Locklear F’23
Originally centered solely on Criminal Alien Requirement (CAR) prisons, Andreina Malki’s research shifted after unexpectedly discovering a plantation-era cemetery on the grounds of a prison site.
Now, her research project has taken a historical direction that traces the continuities and fractures between historical and contemporary systems of oppression in rural North Carolina. This discovery prompted Malki to think creatively about her research methodologies and scholarly output.
I applied to the Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Innovation Fellowship because it offered the opportunity to pursue new methodologies at a crucial moment in my academic career.
Photo: Andreina Malki F’23 conducts on-site research at a plantation-era cemetery in rural North Carolina.
The tangible remnants of the plantation-era cemetery have allowed Malki to visualize the connections between past and present and to create a multimedia, interactive website that both archives and publicly shares her research.
“I applied to the Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Innovation Fellowship because it offered the opportunity to pursue new methodologies at a crucial moment in my academic career,” said Malki. “I had recently learned about the field of digital humanities and was inspired by its capacity to create publicly accessible, multimedium, and interactive representations of my research.”
Malki’s two external mentors, a geographic information systems (GIS) librarian and a digital humanities librarian, also served as resources during the building of this website by helping Malki select the host platform and teaching her the ins and outs of designing and creating a well-executed workflow.
Ayaan Natala’s fellowship project is grounded in her lived experiences as a Black feminist. In reflecting on her development as a scholar, she notes that the fellowship gave her “a year that would not have been possible otherwise” to create a solid foundation for the type of researcher she wants to become.
By engaging in community-based research with members of her hometown, Natala has been able to amplify the voices of her fellow Black Minnesotans. The project uses oral histories to provide a historical and personal context of the 2020 Minneapolis uprising and the organizing legacy that preceded it, and she intends to convert her data into a public-facing digital humanities resource.
Natala chose Judge Lajune Lange, a former Fourth Judicial District Court Judge for the State of Minnesota and a current Black historic preservationist, as an external mentor for her research. Lange helped Natala find primary and secondary sources on Black Minnesota history, informed her on best practices for oral history techniques, and offered advice on how to conduct community-engaged research.
“I am still grappling with how to approach writing about racialized violence with ethics, care, and community input, but through co-creating knowledge with community members, I feel like I am on a path of place-based storytelling that feels healing and rejuvenating,” said Natala.
In addition to providing emerging scholars with a year to conduct research, gain skills, and progress on their dissertation projects, the Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Innovation Fellowship also allows them the opportunity to build their scholarly networks, establish strong ties with their community partners, and reflect on the future of their work as scholars. ACLS looks forward to announcing the 2025 cohort of Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Innovation Fellows later this spring and opening the program’s next competition in the summer.
