2025-2030 Strategic Framework
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Promote
Reward ingenuity, quality, and brilliance in the production and circulation of knowledge
1. Carry out and refine peer-reviewed fellowship and grant programs grounded in our mission and values
- ACLS recognized 355 brilliant scholars with awards in 2025:
Meet the 2025 Fellows and Grantees
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ACLS Fellowship Program
Nā Lei Poina ‘Ole (Beloved Children Not Forgotten): Institutionalized Children in the Hawaiian Kingdom and U.S. Territory of Hawaiʻi
ACLS Fellowship Program
Black, Brown, and Green: The Origins of Environmental Justice in the 1970s
Luce/ACLS Dissertation Fellowship in American Art
Visualities of Belonging: Creating Terruño in Contemporary US Central American Art (1990s – Now)
2. Build, nurture, and connect networks of scholars, within and across institutions, fields and borders of all kinds, including national borders
- ACLS supported a diverse network of publishers and authors by advising on the Path to Open collection, a community initiative by JSTOR that aims to flip 1,000 books to open access. Learn more.
- We continued to cultivate domestic and international networks of scholars by gathering fellows and grantees at events like these:
- We also brought together scholars and supporters of scholarship across the country:
In September 2025, ACLS hosted a gathering of community members and local academics in Cape Cod. In a stirring conversation, ACLS President Joy Connolly encouraged guests to be bold in their defense of higher education, the humanities, and social sciences.
ACLS convened executive directors of more than 30 member societies in Seattle for three days of intensive meetings and peer exchange as part of the 2025 Fall Meeting of its Conference of Executive Officers (CEO) in October 2025.
In December 2025, ACLS hosted a Regional Gathering at Duke University’s Nasher Museum of Art in North Carolina, bringing together more than 40 scholars, fellows, and deans to foster conversation and highlight the significance of fields and community of scholars in humanities and social science.
3. Expand support for people producing knowledge in a wide variety of institutions, outside the academy, and in global networks
- ACLS actively engaged reviewers from a broad range of institutions and career levels, equipping review teams to evaluate diverse scholarship.
- We enhanced access to research on rapidly growing or changing fields through our mapping projects:
Publicly Engaged Religion Mapping Project
Generously funded by the Henry Luce Foundation, the Publicly Engaged Religion Mapping Project is a collaborative initiative between ACLS, the American Academy of Religion, the Institute for Diversity and Civic Life, and the National Humanities Alliance to document and analyze the landscape of publicly engaged scholarship on religion in North America.
China Studies Digital Archives Mapping Project
A new website for the China Studies Digital Archives Mapping Project offers a free guide to open databases for China studies research, as well as a list of leading university libraries that offer services to unaffiliated scholars.
ACLS Strategic Framework 2025-2030
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