ACLS Leading Edge Fellowships

The ACLS Leading Edge Fellowship program aims to demonstrate the potential of humanistic knowledge and methods to solve problems, build capacity, and advance social justice and equity. The fellowships support recent PhDs in the humanities and interpretive social sciences as they work with social justice organizations in communities across the United States. 

The program is made possible through the support of the Mellon Foundation. 

An earlier phase of the program, funded as part of a $2.6 million grant by the Henry Luce Foundation, launched in the summer of 2020 to rapidly respond to the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic. These fellowships placed PhDs pursuing research in art, art history, religion, theology, and ethics with nonprofit partners across the country to document the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on communities and advance collective understanding of the conditions that worsened that impact. With the support of the Mellon Foundation, ACLS expanded the program and refocused it to demonstrate the capacity of the humanities to advance justice and equity in society. 

Leading Edge Fellows

• Take on meaningful and interesting work in diverse fields.
• Receive annual stipends up to 67k, plus health insurance and professional development funding
• Join the staff of social justice organizations.
• Undertake professional development activities with other fellows over the course of the fellowship.
• Begin two-year fellowship terms annually in September.

Leading Edge Hosting Organizations

• Benefit from fellows’ scholarly training and broad sets of skills and capacities, including strong writing, project management, cultural competencies, and problem-solving skills.
• Define capacity-building roles for fellows.
• Provide oversight, supervision, training and access to requisite resources to help fellows succeed in these roles.
• Offer opportunities for networking and mentorship throughout the fellowship term.
• Contribute to the costs of fellows’ health insurance and other benefits, the requisite payroll taxes associated with having the fellow on payroll, and other costs.

Evaluation Criteria

The selection and placement takes place over three stages: The first round of review is a peer review process conducted by PhDs holding positions in various sectors beyond the academy. Finalists emerging from this round will be interviewed by host organizations, who will send rankings and feedback to ACLS. Finally, ACLS interviews top-ranked candidates to offer the fellowship.

First-round reviewers will evaluate applications based on:

• Demonstrated ability to connect academic and non-academic skills and capacities to the qualifications and responsibilities of the applicant’s selected role(s).
• Demonstrated commitment to advancing justice and contributing to solving problems in society.
• Willingness to partner, collaborate, listen, and learn from others; cultural/intellectual humility.
• Applicant’s academic and extra-academic accomplishments.
• The capacity of an award to advance ACLS’s commitment to inclusive excellence in all our programs.

Leading Edge Fellows will join a robust community of practice in the publicly-engaged humanities and will have the opportunity to draw on networks of related ACLS programs, including the Mellon/ACLS Public Fellows, Scholars and Society Fellows, and Robert H. N. Ho Foundation Buddhism Public Scholars. The diverse experience of the ACLS community is a shared resource that fellows are encouraged to draw on during and after their fellowship terms.

Learn More

Read about the work of current Leading Edge Fellows and alumni creating social justice resources and engaging the public humanities. To watch the recording of a webinar for applicants, click here. For organizations interested in hosting a Leading Edge Fellow, please see our most recent RFP.