The American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) announced the 2025 awardees of the ACLS HBCU Faculty Fellowship and Grant Program, which supports exceptional research by faculty in the humanities and interpretive social sciences at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs).
Celeste Lee, an assistant professor of sociology and anthropology, was awarded a faculty fellowship, and Ra Malika Imhotep, an assistant professor of international studies and the African Diaspora Studies Program, was awarded a faculty grant.
“I’m deeply honored to be named one of the 2025 ACLS HBCU Faculty Fellows. It’s humbling and affirming to be selected among such a brilliant cohort of scholars doing transformative work across the humanities and social sciences. The ACLS fellowship is a powerful recognition of the critical questions driving my research and the broader importance of addressing racial disparities in healthcare,” Lee said. “To have this kind of financial and institutional support means that I can devote focused time and energy to this project without compromising research, teaching, and service. That kind of space is rare and invaluable, particularly for faculty at HBCUs who often carry significant workloads and community responsibilities.”
The fellowship will allow Lee to advance her research on nurses' role in the Black maternal health crisis, a topic overlooked in public health and medical sociology. She has three goals: to complete data collection and begin writing for publication, to amplify the voices and experiences of Black mothers and the nurses who care for them, and to translate her research into actionable insights that can inform healthcare policy and nursing education.
“I want this work to contribute to academic conversations and actively support efforts toward racial equity in maternal healthcare,” Lee said.
According to the ACLS, this year’s 20 awardees come from 11 HBCUs and represent a range of scholarly approaches to humanistic research, community-engaged work, and pedagogical innovation. Eight fellows will receive up to $50,000 each to support long-term engagement with a research project, and twelve grantees will receive $10,000 each to support early-stage project development and small-scale research-grounded projects. Both awards are designed to offer flexible support that attends to the research, teaching, and service conditions of HBCU faculty. Additionally, awardees will have access to networking and scholarly programming responsive to their academic goals and disciplinary and institutional contexts.
“I am on the right path and receiving this prestigious award to support the completion of my first academic monograph in a way that truly honors the communal and familial histories that inspire my scholarship affirms that,” Imhotep said. “I was taught the “Uncle Remus” tale of “Brer Rabbit and the Tar Baby” by my father, the late Akbar Imhotep. As my intellectual interests in folk cultures and Black feminisms throughout the African diaspora continued to develop, I have gained critical insight into how black femininity has been constructed and contested in our arts and cultural practices.”
Imhotep plans to use the grant to support the completion of her first academic monograph, “The Tar Baby Principle.” The funding will also support community engagement through collaborative events between Spelman College, The Wren’s Nest Museum, the Kuumba Storytellers of Georgia, and other culture bearers. Imhotep hopes these events will unite the local community, scholars, students, artists, and storytellers.
“My work, in general, and the work of this grant, in particular, is to quilt together these different registers of Black life and labor and see what new insights emerge,” Imhotep said. “The community engagement activities and programming will invite the Spelman community into what I hope is a deep, radical, and wondrous relationship to the West End neighborhood that cultured me.”