About | American Collaboratory

Governed knowledge infrastructure

Shared systems for stewardship, memory, and accountability—so communities and institutions can keep applied knowledge alive across cohorts, grants, and leadership changes.

American Collaboratory grew out of a Kauffman Foundation-funded initiative at Johns Hopkins, where a team of researchers identified a persistent gap between research production and practical application. The Baltimore pilot showed that communities needed more than published findings. They needed governed knowledge infrastructure for collective problem-solving and sustained implementation.

The initiative was co-led by Adler Archer, Suntae Kim, Mac McComas, and Lindsay Thompson, with Katrina Polk and Jonathan Moore serving as task force co-chairs.

When academic-community partnerships end, the applied knowledge they generated rarely survives on community terms. Tools lose maintenance. Institutional memory scatters. American Collaboratory builds the scaffolding so that knowledge can remain alive, governed, and accountable to the people who co-created it.

Today the program operates as a flagship initiative of the Adloris Foundation, with teams working across focus areas from stewardship to community technology.

Communities deserve to keep what they helped create.

Read the Bmore Collab archive (2022–2025)

Proof points

2019–2022

CDHX and early Hopkins-community experiments that informed how we think about shared infrastructure.
2022–2025

Bmore Collab convened researchers, residents, and institutions around Baltimore-focused inquiry with a public learning agenda.
2023–present

Governing knowledge from the commons: publications and practice networks that keep stewardship in view.
Ongoing

Agnes Canopy and related data governance experiments connected to neighborhood accountability.

Six domains of practice

Each area names a place where communities and institutions need shared systems, not one-off projects. The Community Health Commons, Government Service Corps, and Civic Story Lab each draw from these domains to deliver governed knowledge infrastructure in American cities.

American Collaboratory's focus areas draw on the capabilities tradition (Sen, Nussbaum), commons governance (Ostrom), collaborative urban design (Foster and Iaione), and the livable cities framework developed by Lindsay J. Thompson at Johns Hopkins. Together, these traditions inform what American Collaboratory calls Generative Cities: places that keep producing value from the knowledge communities and institutions build together. Read more about our framework →

Knowledge Stewardship

Governance, preservation, and long-term access for community-anchored knowledge. We build the institutional habits and shared systems that keep applied knowledge from disappearing when a grant ends.

Governance Preservation Access

Civic Research Partnerships

Co-design between residents, civic institutions, and research teams, including sustained collaboration with Johns Hopkins and other anchor institutions. Partnerships are structured for accountability, not extraction.

Co-design Partnerships Hopkins

Community Technology

Broadband access, digital literacy, and platforms that meet people where they are. Technology is treated as shared infrastructure, not a one-off product.

Broadband Digital literacy Platforms

Community Data Governance

Data ownership, transparency, and practical governance for neighborhood-scale decisions. Includes work connected to tools such as Agnes Canopy where communities set the terms of use.

Ownership Dashboards Agnes Canopy

Livable Aging

Intergenerational connection, age-friendly built environments, and services that respect dignity. Research translates into neighborhood-level plans residents can actually steer.

Intergenerational Age-friendly Dignity

Community Design

Housing, public space, and planning processes where residents hold real voice. Design is treated as a civic practice, not a top-down package.

Built environment Housing Planning

Adler Archer, JD

Executive Chairman
Adloris Foundation

Katrina Polk, PhD

VP, Community Health
Adloris Foundation

Jonathan Moore

VP, Civic Innovation
Adloris Foundation