Community Connections

Description

These microgrants offer focused support for speaker costs and are intended to encourage ongoing efforts by UW faculty and doctoral students in the humanities and humanistic social sciences to meaningfully connect with communities beyond our campus.

In recognition of the mutual benefits gained by exchange across university and community spaces, the Simpson Center for the Humanities offers support for UW faculty and doctoral students in the humanities and humanistic social sciences to meaningfully connect with communities beyond our campus through publicly-engaged and community-based forms of scholarship; partnerships with tribal museums, local historical societies, public libraries, and other cultural sector entities; collaborations with educators across institutional boundaries, and more. This programs aims to strengthen relationships between the university and our communities.

We offer support through two pathways. The first is for UW faculty and doctoral students to invite speakers from cultural and educational institutions in Bothell, Seattle, Tacoma, and surrounding areas. The second is for local cultural institutions to request funding to support events off-campus that feature UW faculty and/or doctoral students as speakers.

Over the years, the Simpson Center has built relationships with many local cultural and educational institutions. A partial list would include the Alliance Française de Seattle, the Duwamish Longhouse and Cultural Center, Elliott Bay Books Company, Freedom Education Project Puget Sound and prison-based higher education programs at the Monroe Correctional Complex, Folio, Hugo House, Humanities Washington, KEXP, the Northwest African American Museum, the Northwest Translators and Interpreters Society, Seattle Arts & Lectures, the Seattle Art Museum and Seattle Asian Art Museum, the Seattle District Community Colleges, the Seattle International Film Festival, Seattle Symphony, the Tasveer Film Festival & Market, Town Hall Seattle, and Wa Na Wari.

We are interested in the creative ways the connections between the humanities at the University of Washington and our local communities might be deepened through the open exchange of scholarly and community expertise.

If you are seeking support for an event at the University of Washington that does not directly engage with a community partner, please review our application process for faculty to request support for co-sponsored events.
 

Eligibility & Funding Available

In any given year, an applicant can participate in pathways one and two, limited to one time each.

We seek to support a variety of academic departments, partner institutions, and activities across the academic year, through two funding pathways.

Pathway 1: Tenure-track and teaching-track faculty in the humanities and humanistic social sciences (limited to the two ladders: assistant, associate, and full professors and assistant, associate, and full teaching professors) may request small discretionary grants to support the speaker costs associated with events on campus featuring colleagues from local cultural institutions. Our standard honorarium for this category is $500. Doctoral students in the humanities and humanistic social sciences (who have completed their Master’s degree and are currently enrolled at the PhD level) may also request this same level and type of support.

Pathway 2: Cultural institutions may request funds to support speaker costs associated with events off campus featuring the scholarship of UW faculty and/or doctoral students. Our standard allocation for faculty speakers in this category is a $500 research budget. For doctoral students, it is a $250 research budget. Requests for reimbursements must be submitted by May 15, 2027. 

If there are any questions about eligibility, please contact Associate Director Rachel Arteaga at rarteaga@uw.edu.

While we recognize that flexible funding to support event, hosting, venue, and travel costs will likely be of interest to many potential applicants, our current capacity limits us to focusing very directly on speaker fees. 
 

Scheduling Note

The Simpson Center does not offer support for community-engaged events on or off campus that directly conflict with events we are organizing for our core programs and funded projects.