Emerge Project Announcement

Longmore Institute on Disability at San Francisco State University receives $1 million grant from the Mellon Foundation to support the emerging leaders in disability studies and scholar-activism. 

The Paul K. Longmore Institute on Disability is proud to announce Emerge, a three-year initiative that will be made possible thanks to a generous $1 million grant from the Mellon Foundation as part of their new investment in disability studies. This generous support will allow the Longmore Institute to lead a month-long summer workshop for emerging Disability Studies scholar-activists, held three consecutive summers at San Francisco State University with an option for hybrid participation.

 Each Emerge cohort will consist of scholars, artists, or activists whose work enriches the field of Disability Studies with projects that explore disabled people and experiences intersecting with further marginalization by race, gender, sexuality, incarceration record, or immigration status. Each group of ten will be invited to campus from across the U.S. on the basis of their 5-7 years’ experience in disability-related scholarship, arts and culture, and/or disability justice activism. They will receive support for working on new projects grounded in scholar-activism, an assigned mentor, and opportunities to learn from and visit with the Bay Area’s rich disability arts, rights, and justice organizations, as we host open conversations with local disabled changemakers about what scholar-activism means to them and might support them in the future with the challenges they face. The summer will culminate in a hybrid-model symposium presenting their finished works to the broader Disability Studies community. 

Interim Director of the Longmore Institute Emily Beitiks shares, “Our work has prioritized creating bridges so that academics, artists, and activists can better support each other in the shared pursuit of social change. We dreamed up this project because we want to elevate our support for the development of new networks and relationships that support scholar-activism inside disability studies for the next generation of disabled leaders. We are so excited to use our reach to introduce these leaders to the broader international disability community.” For more information, click to join the mailing list for the Longmore Institute on Disability. 

Press Contact:

Dr. Emily Beitiks, Interim Director, Longmore Institute, 415-338-6010 (office) / beitiks@sfsu.edu