ACLS Announces 2026 Project Development Grant Awardees

The American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) is pleased to announce the 2026 ACLS Project Development Grant recipients. The $5,000 grants support scholars in teaching-intensive faculty roles who are conducting innovative research in the humanities and social sciences. In 2026 ACLS proudly celebrates 100 years of grantmaking to individual scholars.

This year’s 16 awardees, receiving a total of $80,000 in funding, come from a diverse range of institutions including public and private research universities, liberal arts colleges, a Historically Black College,and an art and design school.

“ACLS is excited to name this impressive cohort of Project Development Grantees, which represents an outstanding range of research projects,” said Claudia Kinkela, ACLS Program Officer in US Programs. “These seed grants support a broad range of research projects—from art history to political science and women’s studies—and will help scholars working at a variety of institutions advance their research agendas in a meaningful way.”

Funded projects include a new history of American science fiction since 1938; research on how extreme heat has shaped New Yorkers’ lives for more than 150 years; a study on disease and architecture in Modern China from 1894–1949; and an examination of 20th- and 21st-century graphic literature by Asian American, African American, Arab American, and Latinx authors and their relationship to race, citizenship, and political belonging.

Project Development Grants offer flexible support to meet the specific needs of each scholar and help advance their proposed research project. Each grantee receives $5,000, which can cover the costs of any activity that can advance their research, including travel to the field or collections, learned society membership and conference attendance, course buyout or summer salary, child- or eldercare, or editorial or research assistance.

Project Development Grants are competitive and awarded as a component of the ACLS Fellowship Program. The program is funded by the ACLS endowment, which has benefited from the generous support of esteemed funders, institutional members, and individual donors since our founding in 1919.