ACLS Digital Justice Grants Program

The American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) invites applications for the 2025 competition of the ACLS Digital Justice Grants Program. Generously funded by the Mellon Foundation, this program supports digital projects across the humanities and 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. The program offers two kinds of grants: Digital Justice Seed Grants for start-up projects, ranging from $10,000-$25,000 and Digital Justice Development Grants, ranging from $50,000-$100,000, for projects that have advanced beyond the proof-of-concept phase. 

 

 

The deadline for applications is November 20, 2025, 9:00 PM EST.

 

 

The program seeks to address the inequities in the distribution of access to tools and support for digital work among scholars across various fields, those working with under-utilized or understudied source materials, and those in institutions with less support for digital projects. It promotes inclusion and sustainability by extending the opportunity to participate in the digital transformation of humanistic inquiry to a greater number of humanities scholars and projects. Additionally, all grant recipients can receive general financial planning coaching from the Nonprofit Finance Fund to plan for the long-term stewardship and sustainability of their projects.

 

 

Learn more about application and eligibility requirements: www.acls.org/DigitalJustice 

 

 

ACLS Digital Justice Grants support projects that pursue the following activities:  

• Critically engage with the interests and histories of people of color and other historically marginalized communities, including (but not limited to) Black, Latinx, and Indigenous communities; people with disabilities; and queer, trans, and gender nonconforming people through the ethical use of digital tools and methods.
• Cultivate greater openness to new sources of knowledge and strategic approaches to content building and knowledge dissemination.
• Engage in capacity building efforts, including but not limited to: pedagogical projects that train students in digital humanities methods as a key feature of the project’s content building practice; publicly engaged projects that develop new technological infrastructure with community partners; trans-institutional projects that connect scholars across academic and cultural heritage institutions.
• Seed Grants: Explore or experiment with new materials, methodologies, and research agendas by way of planning workshops, prototyping, and/or testing products.
• Development Grants: Advance beyond the prototyping or proof-of-concept phase and articulate the next financial, technological, and intellectual phases of project development.

 

 

To support prospective applicants, ACLS is offering a webinar series throughout the application period, which includes both general information sessions with program staff as well as topic specific webinars (e.g. data ethics and capacity building, data stewardship) with former reviewers and grantees. 

 

 

Eligibility

• Project’s principal investigator must be a scholar in the humanities and/or the interpretative social sciences.
• Projects must be made as widely available as intellectual property constraints allow, ideally with the most liberal open-source and Creative Commons license that is appropriate for the underlying content.
• An institution of higher education in the United States must administer any awarded grant funds.
• For Seed Grants: Project must be within the start-up or prototyping phase of development.
• For Development Grants: Projects must demonstrate evidence of significant preliminary work as well as a record of engagement and impact with scholarly and/or public audiences.

 

 

ACLS grants may not support projects whose sole or primary focus is the production of creative works (e.g., novels or films), textbooks, straightforward translations, or purely pedagogical projects. Institutional indirect costs will not be covered. Grant terms must begin between July 1, 2026 and December 31, 2026, with a work plan that lasts from 12-18 months.

 

 

Supplementary materials, including examples of application components, are available here. Completed applications must be submitted through the ACLS online fellowship and grant administration system (ofa.acls.org) no later than 9:00 PM EST on November 20, 2025. For more information, please see our FAQ page or contact digitaljustice@acls.org with program inquiries.