Announcing the Movements Against Mass Incarceration Lab

Headed by Assistant Professor of Sociology David J. Knight and supported by a three-year $1.7 million grant from the Mellon Foundation, the Movements Against Mass Incarceration Lab at Incite will create a first-of-its-kind archive that centers the political ideas and movement-building of incarcerated people. The Lab will focus on movements led by Black and Brown people who have experienced incarceration, in addition to allied individuals and organizations outside of prisons. In doing so, the Lab will work toward several goals, including creating go-to historical source materials, facilitating fellowships and participatory opportunities wherein individuals and organizations can create new works from the Lab’s source materials, and resourcing movements that can be supported from preserving and sharing movement histories, including their own.

Between December 2023 and March 2026, the Movements Lab will conduct oral history interviews with 200 organizers, activists, and politically oriented artists who are directly impacted by incarceration, in addition to their political collaborators. To conduct this work, the Lab is partnering with five grassroots social-change organizations in five different areas of the US.

The Lab has confirmed partnerships with the following five social-change organizations across the US: the California Coalition for Women Prisoners, based throughout California; the Chicago Torture Justice Center in Chicago, Illinois; Both Sides of the Wall in Birmingham, Alabama; the Women Transcending Project in New York, New York; and Barred Business in Atlanta, Georgia.

Read the announcement from Incite here. 

Congratulations, David!