Funding Opportunities

Our Process

The Simpson Center provides financial and administrative support for crossdisciplinary research, teaching, and engagement projects. We support a wide range of activities, including fellowships, cross-departmental research groups, scholarly conferences and symposia, community-engaged collaborations, and other projects.

The Simpson Center administers two funding rounds per year, in Fall and Spring Quarters. Both fall and spring rounds support the same funding term, July through June of the following year. Grant applications are reviewed and selected for support by the Simpson Center Executive Board. Proposed projects should be led by UW faculty and/or graduate students, require $1,000 or more in funding, and be planned for the subsequent academic year.

Applications for some categories are accepted in both the fall and spring; however, some categories are only open during one funding round, as noted below.

We are eager for new, unconventional projects that don’t fit neatly into one of our other categories but that align with the Simpson Center’s mission. Please contact Rachel Arteaga to discuss.

Opportunities for Faculty

• Society of Scholars Research Fellowships (Fall Funding Round) – an intellectual community in which eight faculty and three doctoral students from across disciplines in the humanities and interpretive social sciences contribute to and learn from one another’s work in bi-weekly meetings throughout the academic year.
• Digital Humanities Summer Fellowship (Fall Funding Round) – support for four faculty pursuing research projects that use digital technologies in innovative and intensive ways and/or explore the historical, social, aesthetic, and cross-cultural implications of digital cultures.
• Colloquia and Conferences (Fall and Spring Rounds) – include speaker series, international research, and working conferences, and are selected for support based on their crossdisciplinary and interdisciplinary focus.
• Crossdisciplinary Research Clusters (Fall and Spring Rounds) – seed new collaborations between faculty and graduate students who share research interests.

Opportunities for Graduate Students

• Society of Scholars Graduate Fellowship (Fall Funding Round) – an intellectual community in which eight faculty and three doctoral students from across disciplines in the humanities and interpretive social sciences contribute to and learn from one another’s work in bi-weekly meetings throughout the academic year. This program has been expanded to include additional Summer Society of Scholars Fellowship cohort for doctoral candidates.
• Digital Humanities Summer Fellowship (Fall Funding Round) – supports UW doctoral students whose projects use digital technologies in innovative and intensive ways and/or explore the historical, social, aesthetic, and cross-cultural implications of digital cultures. We have expanded our call for proposals to also include projects focused on digital humanities pedagogy.
• Barclay Simpson Scholars in Public (Fall Funding Round)– supports doctoral students in the humanities, broadly speaking, to pursue public-facing projects in their areas of study and practice. Collaborative projects are encouraged. Recipients of this fellowship will each receive a stipend of $7,500. 
• Graduate Research Clusters (Spring Funding Round) – supports crossdisciplinary and interdisciplinary research.