ACLS Awards Second Cycle of Academic Society Microgrants Focused on Equity-Centered Collaboration
The American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) is pleased to announce the recipients of the second cycle of the Intention Foundry Learned Society Extended Engagement Microgrants. With funding from the Mellon Foundation, ACLS established the Intention Foundry (IF) in 2021 as a multi-year series of in-person and virtual workshops in which ACLS member societies collaborated with scholars and higher education administrators to develop and pilot actionable solutions to advance equity, inclusion, and justice in their fields.
In this funding cycle, ACLS will support four member societies pursuing projects, which include workshops supporting early-career scholars through their first publication process and convenings on contingent faculty labor rights, the intersection of academic freedom and the precarity of scholars, and the relationship between activism and scholarship. Collectively, the projects funded in this cycle signal the value of equity-centered collaboration in tackling the pressing issues of our current moment. The awardees are:
- American Academy of Religion (AAR)
- American Antiquarian Society (AAS)
- Medieval Academy of America (MAA)
- Middle East Studies Association of North America, Inc. (MESANA)
“These microgrants are designed to sustain the momentum built during the Intention Foundry’s initial workshops from 2021-2023, so it is especially impactful to see academic societies continue to engage with the scholars they invited to participate in IF during that time,” noted Keyanah Nurse, ACLS Senior Program Officer of Intentional Design for an Equitable Academy (IDEA). “In supporting these projects, we are highlighting the value of long-term, deep, and meaningful collaborations with scholars who traditionally have access to fewer support systems.”
ACLS awarded the first round of microgrants in October 2024 to 10 member societies to support projects advancing their efforts toward more diversity, equity, and inclusion within the academy. The recipients of the next cycle of microgrants will be announced in summer 2025.
The Intention Foundry is part of the recently established ACLS Intentional Design for an Equitable Academy (IDEA) unit. IDEA, which also runs the ACLS Digital Justice Grant Program and the Leadership Institute for a New Academy (LINA), draws on human-centered design as a methodology for developing activities and convenings that re-envision academia’s culture, policies, and practices.