a2ru Ground Works Awarded 2025 ACLS Digital Justice Development Grant for “Reco(r)ding CripTech”
Jun 5, 2025
a2ru is proud to announce that a research team from a2ru Ground Works has been awarded a 2025 ACLS Digital Justice Development Grant. The American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) Digital Justice Grants Program funds 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.
Supported by the Mellon Foundation, the program also prioritizes projects that bolster the local ecosystem of digital humanities at their academic, community, or cultural heritage institutions, thereby creating opportunities for scholars, especially those within historically underfunded fields, to pursue innovative, diverse digital scholarship.
Elizabeth McLain from a2ru member Virginia Tech leads a research team that also includes Ground Works Managing Editor Veronica Stanich, Daragh Byrne from a2ru member Carnegie Mellon University, independent scholar Cheryl Ball, and Luke Kudryashov from a2ru member University of Minnesota. They have been awarded for the project “Reco(r)ding CripTech,” which documents the creative processes of five artists from the disability community in their art-and-technology residencies with the Leonardo CripTech Incubator. The resulting digital archive will include artifacts of their processes such as notes and drafts as well as recorded reflections, and will be fully accessible on the Ground Works online platform.
The next phase of the project is to expand through four specific objectives: 1) Disabled-led User and Accessibility Testing; 2) Curriculum development; 3) Expansion of the archive; 4) Special Edition of Ground Works.This project supports the artists’ evolving practices, captures the experience to inform future access-centered artmaking and archiving, and centers diverse ways of knowing and instantiating knowledge.
“Reco(r)ding CripTech” is one of seven established projects that has been awarded ACLS Digital Justice Development Grants of up to $100,000. Grantees will have the opportunity to collaborate with the Nonprofit Finance Fund on developing a long-term financial plan for their projects.
“ACLS is proud that this year’s Digital Justice Grants include advanced doctoral students and postdocs among the principal investigators and lead scholars on the awarded projects,” said Keyanah Nurse, ACLS Senior Program Officer of Intentional Design for an Equitable Academy (IDEA) Programs. “This is an encouraging signal of the growing capacity of pipelines, mentorship networks, and skills-training for those pursuing digital work earlier in their academic careers.”
a2ru Executive Director Maryrose Flanigan says of the award: “We are grateful for this support from ACLS to be able to sustain this important work of this gifted team dedicated to documenting the artistic processes of these artists. I cannot wait to see what we learn.” Stanich adds, “Our team is thrilled to have the support of the ACLS for our ongoing work on Reco(r)ding CripTech! We will be able to enhance the accessibility of the archive, build curricular modules that promote the use of the archive in the classroom, and publish a special edition of Ground Works that invites new disabled-led collaborations exploring crip creativity.”
ACLS previously supported “Reco(r)ding CripTech” in 2022 with a Digital Justice Seed Grant.