Aliyah Dunn-Salahuddin Awarded 2024 Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Innovation Fellowship
Awards Support Emerging Scholars Pursuing Pathbreaking Dissertation Research
The American Council of Learned Societies is proud to announce that Aliyah Dunn-Salahuddin has been awarded a 2024 Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Innovation Fellowship. The program supports doctoral students in the humanities and interpretive social sciences as they pursue bold and innovative approaches to dissertation research.
The American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) launched the program in 2023 with the support of the Mellon Foundation to advance a vision for doctoral education that prioritizes openness to new methods and sources, underrepresented voices and perspectives, and scholarly experimentation. The awards are designed to accelerate change in the norms of humanistic scholarship by recognizing those who take risks in the modes, methods, and subjects of their research.
Dunn-Salahuddin has been recognized as one of 45 awardees, selected from a pool of more than 700 applicants through a rigorous, interdisciplinary peer review process. Dunn-Salahuddin’s research explores a history of the Black freedom struggle in San Francisco filtered through the lens of environment, race, and infrastructure. Primarily focusing on the Bayview-Hunters Point community of the 1960s and 1970s, the project emphasizes: 1) the production of urban black space in relation to gender and Black political ideology; 2) the development of US nuclear capabilities in San Francisco and issues of environmental justice; 3) the relationship between Black environmentalism and civil rights in Northern California. At its core, this project is an urban black history of post-WWII America that traces the spatial, material, and social conditions of African Americans in San Francisco’s Bayview Hunters Point. Utilizing oral history, community engagement, and original dance film shorts, this project reveals the ways that African Americans informed and shaped their environments, as well as the institutions and systems that governed their lives.
“We look forward to following the progress of these remarkable emerging scholars as they explore new research methodologies, forge collaborative partnerships in the co-creation of knowledge, and engage new audiences for humanistic scholarship,” said John Paul Christy, Senior Director of US Programs at ACLS. “Each of these awards is an opportunity for the sector to learn about approaches to fostering the evolution of doctoral education.”
Each fellow receives an award of up to $50,000, consisting of a $40,000 stipend for the fellowship year; up to $8,000 for project-related research, training, professional development, and travel expenses; and a $2,000 stipend to support external mentorship that offers new perspectives on the fellow’s project and expands their advising network. With fellows pursuing their research across the country and beyond, ACLS will also provide opportunities for virtual networking and scholarly programming throughout the fellows’ award terms.