This poster presentation will detail the ethos and method behind the programmatic design of the ACLS Digital Justice Grant Program. Successfully piloted in 2021 and renewed through 2027, the program currently funds both start-up and established digital projects across the humanities and interpretative social sciences that critically engage with the interests and histories of people of color and other historically marginalized communities through the ethical use of digital tools and methods. Funded projects have engaged members of such communities as co-creators of knowledge, partnering with them around digital tools that analyze and intervene in racial capitalism, colonialism, and heteronormativity, among others.
Beyond its thematic impetus, however, the aspiration of “digital justice” functions as both process and outcome within the very design and operation of the program. Its four primary modes of iterative and interlinked activity -- recognition of context and its historicity; intentional resource design; redistributive methods; reparative outcomes – address the persistent inequities in access to tools and support for digital work among humanities scholars, those working with non-traditional materials, and those based at higher education institutions with fewer resources available to support humanists working with digital techniques.
Starting from the historical inequities that have created uneven funding landscapes in the first place, the program’s dual structure of Seed and Development Grants offers the opportunity of experimentation and risk-taking to those who have previously worked with far fewer resources to advance their fields. Other resources, such as examples of funded applications and webinars on topics such as data ethics and capacity building led by former reviewers of ACLS’s digital humanities grants and fellowship programs, unveil the so-called “hidden curriculum” of grant writing (Rooks, 2021). Especially for applicants new to grant writing and/or who lack access to academia’s informal, but influential, information sharing networks, such access and transparency further imbue the values of justice and equity into the operations of the program. Finally, because of the program’s added emphasis on capacity building, the new application prompts and evaluation criteria give reviewers a more nuanced understanding of the contexts in which scholars at less resourced institutions pursue their work. Such information, we believe, will be critical to the program’s peer review processes and the subsequent (and aspirational) reparative outcomes of bolstering digital humanities resources and infrastructures at such institutions.
The charge that digital justice function as both process and outcome emerges out of ACLS’s newest organizational unit, IDEA, or Intentional Design for an Equitable Academy. The IDEA unit draws on human-centered design as a methodology for developing activities and convenings where we re-envision academia’s culture, policies, and practices. In leading with the needs of our various constituencies throughout the higher education ecosystem, the IDEA unit designs reparative interventions and transformative engagements that further ACLS efforts to enhance equity, justice, and well-being in the academy. Our Digital Justice Grant Program actualizes this vision within the realm of digital humanities, investing in the scholars, communities, and fields of study that highlight what justice-oriented insights and practices can bring to bear on the digital.