Summer Institute in the Arts & Humanities (SIAH)

Izabel Del Bosque presents her work at the 2019 SIAH Worlds in Progress Exhibit.

About the Summer Institute in the Arts & Humanities (SIAH)

The Summer Institute in the Arts & Humanities (SIAH) was created by the Office of Undergraduate Research in collaboration with the Simpson Center for the Humanities in 2002 to provide an intensive research opportunity for humanities and arts students that increases the number of undergraduates doing research in the humanities, engages humanities and arts faculty in research with undergraduates, establishes a community of undergraduate arts and humanities scholars, and creates a forum for humanities undergraduates to present their scholarly work.

SIAH offers a research opportunity for undergraduates to engage in scholarly research with accomplished scholars and peers while earning full-time academic credit. This scholarly experience occurs in the context of seminars and tutorial-style lessons with faculty who offer expertise from disciplinary and interdisciplinary points of view in a space that encourages mutual learning with peers as well as independent thought. Student participants develop individual, original research ideas related to an interdisciplinary theme, create a scholarly research paper or project, work through a faculty and peer critique process and formally present their work to their colleagues and the larger community at a closing symposium.

Learn more about SIAH through the Office of Undergraduate Research website.

Past SIAH Themes:

  • 2024 – More-than-human Worlds: The Poetics and Politics of Life
  • 2023 – A Black Sense: Time, Art, and Being
  • 2021 – Monumental Reckoning: Unsettling Histories, Reimagining Futures
  • 2020 – Contested Bodies: Power, Identity, and the Life Cycle
  • 2019 – Creating Alternate Worlds
  • 2018 – Seattle’s Upside Down: Unearthing the City’s Deeper Histories
  • 2016 – Excitations: Energy Studies in the Arts and Humanities
  • 2014 – Native Modernities: Histories, Politics, and Arts of Indigeneity
  • 2013 – Outbreak! Reimagining Death and Life, Disease and Health
  • 2012 – Borderlands: Power, Place, and Difference
  • 2009 – Shifting Empire: Critical Imperial Studies in the Americas and Beyond
  • 2008 – Media and the Senses
  • 2007 – New Directions in Cultural Research: Community Collaboration Practice
  • 2006 – Nature Matters: On the Varieties of Environmental Experience
  • 2005 – Becoming Strangers: Travel, Trust, and Collaboration
  • 2004 – Trauma, Time, and Memory
  • 2003 – Culture and Globalization
  • 2002 – Innovations: Text, Technologies and New Media in Ancient Worlds and Contemporary Cultures

How to Apply:

SIAH updates its application procedures each year. Learn more on the Office of Undergraduate Research website.

Contact the Office of Undergraduate Research about SIAH:

Email: undergradresearch@uw.edu 
Phone: 206-543-4282
171 Mary Gates Hall

Image above: Izabel Del Bosque presents her work at the 2019 SIAH Worlds in Progress Exhibit.