A four-year, $682,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation awarded to the University of Washington will help four university presses and the Association of American University Presses—including the University of Georgia Press—create a pipeline program to diversify academic publishing by offering apprenticeships in acquisitions departments.
The collaborative project involves the University of Georgia Press, the University of Washington Press, the MIT Press, Duke University Press and the AAUP. The University Press Diversity Fellowship program will create cohorts of four fellows per year for three years. The program will recruit fellows who have significant personal experience and engagement with diverse communities and a demonstrated ability to bring the understandings gleaned from such engagement to the daily work of academic publishing. Fellows will have the opportunity to connect with one another and engage with industry colleagues at two AAUP annual meetings.
The University Press Diversity Fellowship program is the first cross-press initiative of its kind in the U.S. to address the lack of diversity in the publishing industry. Although university presses have long fostered and supported diversity-related fields such as Native and Indigenous studies; African-American studies; women’s, gender and sexuality studies; and Asian-American studies, the fellowship program represents an investment in creating career development opportunities and a supportive environment for diversity publishing.