The program aims to deepen public understanding of religion by advancing innovative scholarship on religion in international contexts and equipping individual scholars and institutions of higher education with the capacities to connect their work to journalism and the media and to engage audiences beyond the academy.  
 
Proposals are sought for collaborative projects hosted at US-based accredited institutions of higher education with research and curricular strengths in journalism and communication and in the humanistic and social science fields concerned with the study of global religions (including, but not limited to, anthropology, area studies, history, languages and literature, political science, religious studies, and sociology). ACLS will award grants to institutions proposing interdisciplinary or cross-institutional collaborations that connect scholarship on religion to journalistic training and practice.
 
While the grants may support one or more of a broad range of objects for funding, applicants must propose activities that connect humanities and social science programs within their institution with journalism schools, departments, or initiatives, or with external media organizations. Applicants are encouraged to propose activities that build on or extend current curricular and research strengths in relevant disciplinary areas. Successful approaches to such work might include a multimodal slate of campus programming that brings together journalists and religion scholars in workshops, seminars, courses, and public events; a symposium that blends thematic reflections on global religions with practice-oriented sessions on reaching out to audiences beyond the academy; or a course that offers humanities or social science students and/or faculty hands-on training as religion reporters. Proposals may propose a combination of approaches, provided that applications demonstrate how the proposed activities complement one another.