The American Council of Learned Societies Announces 2021 ACLS Digital Extension Grant Awardees

The Digital Extension Grant program supports collaborative, team-based humanities and interpretive social sciences projects that advance inclusive scholarly practices and promote greater understanding of diverse human experiences through digital research. The grants of up to $150,000 are also designed to extend the reach of established digital initiatives to new communities of users. The program is made possible by a grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

“Digital projects in the humanities uncover and provide access to collections and materials that might have been hidden from sight or not even considered worthy of collecting,” said ACLS Vice President James Shulman. “We’re excited to see how this year’s Digital Extension awardees contribute to forward-looking work that builds fields and scholars’ careers, and will shape the scholarship of tomorrow.”

The projects awarded grants this year will bring together scholars working at a range of institutions of higher education, including small liberal arts colleges, regional comprehensives, research universities, and historically Black colleges and universities.

This year’s grantees are:

• Arab Data Bodies: Social Media in Mixed Reality
  Laila Shereen Sakr (Principal Investigator, University of California, Santa Barbara), Susana Ruiz (Co-PrincipaI Investigator, University of California, Santa Cruz)
• ethniCITY: Mapping Places of Belonging
  Annette Kim (PI, University of Southern California), Bryan Carter (University of Arizona), Jonathan Crisman (University of Arizona), Sonja L. Lanehart (University of Arizona)
• Expanding a Necessary Space: Extending the Virtual Martin Luther King Project’s Digital Scholarship, Pedagogy and Community Collaboration
  Victoria Gallagher (PI, North Carolina State University), Candice Edrington (High Point University), Elizabeth Nelson (North Carolina State University), Max Renner (Molloy College), Cindy Rosenfeld (North Carolina State University)
• Expanding the Digital Library on American Slavery through Local, Community-Engaged Digital Humanities Research
  Charles Denton Johnson (PI, North Carolina Central University), Jarvis L. Hargrove (Co-PI, East Carolina University), Jaime Amanda Martinez (Co-PI, University of North Carolina, Pembroke), Richard Cox (University of North Carolina at Greensboro), Claire E. Heckel (University of North Carolina at Greensboro)
• Hidden Archives: Race, Gender, and Religion in University of California, Santa Barbara’s Ballitore Collection
  Rachael Scarborough King (PI, University of California, Santa Barbara), Emily Kugler (Howard University), Danielle Spratt (California State University, Northridge)
• Mapping Inequality: Redlining in New Deal America 
  Robert K. Nelson (PI, University of Richmond), LaDale Winling (Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University)