The ACLS Intention Foundry (IF) is a series of in-person and virtual workshops focused on advancing equity, inclusion, and justice within the academy. Scholars, college and university administrators, and academic society leaders come together to identify and develop actionable solutions to longstanding inequities in the higher education ecosystem. IF is made possible by generous funding from the Mellon Foundation. Led by Senior Program Officer of IDEA (Intentional Design for an Equitable Academy) programs, Dr. Keyanah Nurse, IF fosters partnerships, creative speculation, and collaborative problem-solving.
“Beyond Precarity: Incubators for Secure Futures” Series
The Intention Foundry’s “Beyond Precarity” incubators offer intensive, semester-long engagements designed to confront and transform the intellectual, social, and financial challenges that early career scholars face in today’s academy. The Spring 2025 Collaboratory on Data Storytelling combined virtual sessions with a retreat at Howard University, focusing on using data to tell advocacy-driven narratives about academic precarity. The Fall 2024 incubator on Scholar Precarity and Mutual Aid responded to themes raised by IF participants from 2021–2023.
Fall 2024: Scholar Precarity and Mutual Aid
Guided by Dean Spade’s work, the sessions emphasized mutual aid, ethics of care, and community-building across academic and non-academic spaces.
Participants engaged in reflective dialogue, collective problem-setting, and visionary planning in response to the intellectual, social, and financial precarity they were experiencing in academia.
Spring 2025: Collaboratory on Data Storytelling
Participants developed technical skills in data visualization with Tableau Public
Sessions emphasized collaborative, human-centered design, guided by a curriculum rooted in adrienne maree brown’s Emergent Strategy
BLIS Collective (Black Liberation- Indigenous Sovereignty) facilitated a workshop on narrative change, liberatory storytelling, and cross-movement coalition building
Spring 2025 IF Incubator Tableau WorkshopSpring 2025 IF Incubator Retreat Participants
Learned Society Extended Engagement Microgrants Initiative
A workshop series pairing early-career scholars with seasoned editors to demystify the peer-review and publication process.
American Antiquarian Society (AAS)
A convening on contingent-faculty labor rights, designed to co-create resource toolkits for adjunct advocacy.
Medieval Academy of America (MAA)
A forum exploring how academic‐freedom principles can be reimagined to address the precarity of non-tenure-track scholars.
Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESANA)
A collaborative lab investigating the relationship between scholarly activism and institutional support.
A workshop series pairing early-career scholars with seasoned editors to demystify the peer-review and publication process.
A convening on contingent-faculty labor rights, designed to co-create resource toolkits for adjunct advocacy.
A forum exploring how academic‐freedom principles can be reimagined to address the precarity of non-tenure-track scholars.
A collaborative lab investigating the relationship between scholarly activism and institutional support.
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. 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.
Dr. Keyanah Nurse, Senior Program Officer of IDEA Programs
The next cohort of microgrant recipients will be announced in Fall 2025.
Towards a New Academy
IF positions scholars from historically and systemically marginalized groups to set the agenda for change in the Academy. It is one part of how ACLS is broadening its work beyond fellowships to accelerate change necessary for the humanities and social sciences to thrive. ACLS is focused on providing more pathways to success for scholars who have less access to support systems and networks. This means creating space for scholars to build alliances and relationships across institutions and fields of study. It requires the kind of wide-ranging and difficult conversations that IF cultivates.
The Intentional Design for an Equitable Academy (IDEA) unit draws on human-centered design as a methodology for developing activities and convenings where we can re-envision academia’s culture, policies, and practices. The unit includes the Intention Foundry (IF), theACLS Digital Justice Grant Program, and the Leadership Institute for a New Academy (LINA). ACLS takes this moment as a call for cultivating opportunities for reparative intervention and transformative engagement that further ACLS efforts to enhance equity, justice, and well-being in the academy.
The collaboratory offered technical skills-training to early-career scholars, contextualized to demonstrate data storytelling’s capacity as a tool for advocacy and coalition building within and beyond the academy.
In a new video conversation, Jovonne Bickerstaff discusses the Intention Foundry, a collaborative project convening learned society directors, emerging scholars, and university administrators.
