The Mellon Foundation has awarded Emory University a multi-year, $526,000 grant to develop a new center to advance civic engagement and democratic participation through interdisciplinary humanistic research, experiential education and partnerships between Emory and Georgia-based organizations in and around Atlanta.
The Imagining Democracy Lab will be led by historian Carol Anderson, the Charles Howard Candler Professor of African American Studies and an internationally recognized expert and public scholar on voting and civil rights, and Bernard L. Fraga, associate professor of Political Science and specialist in race, elections, and voter behavior.
Central to the project is building empowerment and civic engagement by asking citizens to imagine what a viable, functioning democracy could mean for enhancing the quality of their lives and, then, providing the information and pathways to make that kind of democracy real.
“This outstanding award will support innovative models for collaborative research and teaching and will forge enduring relationships between Emory and our surrounding communities. I am grateful to the Mellon Foundation for its recognition and support for this vital initiative that will greatly expand our work around civic engagement and social justice, and actively advance our democratic future,” says Carla Freeman, interim Dean of Emory College of Arts & Sciences.
The Imagining Democracy Lab builds upon Anderson’s award-winning scholarship on the history of racial inequality and voter suppression in the U.S. and the work of Fraga, whose award-winning book The Turnout Gap documents the causes and consequences of racial/ethnic disparities in who turns out to vote.
Other faculty in political science, African American studies, law and history will be involved as well. The lab also will use additional institutional strengths with the resources of Emory’s James Weldon Johnson Institute for the Study of Race and Difference and…
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