Ground Works Awarded 2022 ACLS Digital Justice Seed Grant
Jun 1, 2022
a2ru is proud to announce that Veronica Stanich, a2ru Research Programs Manager and the Managing Editor of our online journal Ground Works, has been awarded a 2022 ACLS Digital Justice Seed Grant alongside collaborators Daragh Byrne and Elizabeth McClain.
The American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) Digital Justice Grant Program is designed to promote and provide resources for digital humanities projects that aim to diversify the digital domain, advance justice and equity in digital scholarly practice, and contribute to public understanding of racial and social justice issues, especially those that elevate the interests and histories of people of color and other historically marginalized communities including Black, Latinx, and Indigenous communities; people with disabilities; and queer, trans, and gender-nonconforming people. The program is made possible by a grant from the Mellon Foundation.
Stanich has been awarded for the project “Reco(r)ding CripTech”, which documents the creative, interdisciplinary processes of six artists from the disability community in their art-and-technology residencies with the CripTech Incubator. The resulting archive will be fully accessible on the Ground Works online platform. Their working process emphasizes voice, agency, and aesthetic access, and is based on principles of disability justice. This project supports the artists’ in their evolving practices, captures the experience to inform future access-centered artmaking and archiving, and centers diverse ways of knowing and instantiating knowledge. Stanich and her collaborators expect “Reco(r)ding CripTech” to contribute to a paradigm shift in understandings of “research” by redefining who produces knowledge, how they do it, and how that knowledge is represented. The other members of the principal project team are Daragh Byrne from Carnegie Mellon University and Elizabeth McClain from a2ru partner institution Virginia Tech.
“Reco(r)ding CripTech” is one of eight start-up projects awarded ACLS Digital Justice Seed Grants, which will each receive up to $25,000. An additional seven teams have been awarded ACLS Digital Justice Development Grants, which support projects that have advanced beyond early phases of development. All grantees will have the opportunity work with the Nonprofit Finance Fund to plan for the long-term stewardship and sustainability of their projects.
“The inaugural ACLS Digital Justice Grantees highlight a wonderful convergence between publicly engaged humanities and digital humanities,” said Keyanah Nurse, ACLS Program Officer of Higher Education Initiatives. “These teams exemplify the move away from extractive practices around data collection and towards collaborative knowledge production with those outside the academy. ACLS is proud to support the robust engagement with data ethics at the core of these projects.”
a2ru Executive Director Maryrose Flanigan said, “We are grateful to the ACLS and Mellon Foundation for their support of ‘Reco(r)ding CripTech.’ Advancing equity and providing open access to innovative research are at the very core of Ground Works‘s mission, and we are honored to be in such distinguished and inspiring company among this first cohort of grantees.”
Stanich adds, “Daragh, Elizabeth, and I are so thankful to the ACLS and Mellon Foundation for their support, which is an energizing vote of confidence for this project. We have much to learn from the important, pathbreaking work of the CripTech Incubator artists, and we look forward to sharing it with our scholarly and artistic communities.”
Image: Stanich (left) and collaborators Byrne (top right) and McLain (bottom right).