Deadline: 7-Dec-21
The American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) is pleased to invite applications for ACLS Sustaining Public Engagement Grants, a responsive funding program made possible by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities as part of the Sustaining the Humanities through the American Rescue Plan (SHARP) initiative.
These grants are designed to repair the damage done to publicly engaged humanities projects and programs by the social and economic disruption of the Covid-19 pandemic.
ACLS seeks proposals for grants that will support established publicly engaged humanities projects, initiatives, or programs in accredited US colleges and universities. With $3.5 million provided under the SHARP initiative, ACLS will conduct a rigorous and inclusive peer review process to select up to 40 projects or programs for grants that will redress programming setbacks and/or reductions in internal capacity and staffing support on the part of faculty, staff, students, and community partners due to pandemic conditions.
Applicants will be required to demonstrate how their programs engage with issues of urgent public interest in one or more of the program’s six key areas: racial equity; climate change; US-global relations; public health and pandemic recovery; strengthening democracy, and exploring America’s diverse history.
Funding Information
The grants will range between $50,000 and $225,000 for terms of 12 months.
Eligible Projects
The strongest proposals will demonstrate that their projects have:
- an established track record of successful public engagement on issues related to this program’s core thematic areas;
- sustained involvement by members of the campus community;
- the capacity to use grant funds to sustain staffing and programming that have been reduced due to the pandemic;
- prioritized programmatic work with extra-mural communities. While program capacity building (curricular development, salary support for students, staff, and faculty) can be key components of proposals, projects that do not support direct community engagement would be considered less relevant.
- a demonstrated commitment to fairly and equitably supporting project participants facing special precarity due to the pandemic, including adjunct and other non-tenure track faculty, students and faculty from historically underrepresented backgrounds in higher education, and community partners (for example, through fair compensation, equitable participation, and recognition of participant involvement, among other means).
Eligibility Criteria
- Project must be hosted by an accredited institution of higher education in the United States.
- Project must demonstrate established relationships with partners and/or audiences beyond the academy.
- Project’s principal investigator must be a scholar in a field of the humanities.
- Project must be grounded in the publicly engaged humanities.
For more information, visit https://www.acls.org/Competitions-and-Deadlines/ACLS-Sustaining-Public-Engagement-Grants
