For Faculty

funding spelled out in scrabble tiles

The Simpson Center administers two funding rounds per year, in Fall and Spring Quarters. Both fall and spring rounds support funding for the following year. Currently, we are accepting proposals for Spring Funding Round.

Current and Upcoming Opportunities

Spring Funding: Open March 5, 2024 | Due April 5, 2024

The next fall funding round opens in October 2024 and closes in November 2024

Digital Humanities Summer Fellowship

4 awards granted each year. Applications considered in fall funding round only.

Important Dates

Application Dates
Opens: Fall 2024
Due: Fall 2024

Funding Term
Six weeks in the summer 2025

Eligibility

UW tenure-track faculty at all ranks; faculty who have already received digital humanities fellowships may apply again to continue work in the digital humanities.

Description

Our first priority for the Digital Humanities Summer Fellowships is to support scholars 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. Our second priority is projects focused on digital humanities pedagogy. Joint applications for collaborative projects are encouraged. This may take, for example, the form of two faculty members working together, each with a full fellowship, or one faculty member and one doctoral student working together, each with a full fellowship. Faculty members are also encouraged to include short-term collaborators or consultants in adjacent fields, such as instructional design, information science, and digital preservation. 

In terms of pedagogy, we are interested in projects that address the goal of incorporating digital humanities skills and methods into graduate and undergraduate education. This work might be undertaken at the level of a dynamic reimagining of a single course, or instructional innovation within a program or department—or across them. At the doctoral level, this might take the form of a new graduate seminar with strong digital humanities components, the development of a workshop series for doctoral students to sharpen their DH skills, or a rigorous exploration of digital dissertation formats.   

Our purpose is to help introduce and diffuse creative uses of digital technologies in our courses and curricula across the humanities and humanistic social sciences. How might digital platforms and other tools be deployed in your courses for exploring and creating online archives and exhibits, timelines and visualizations, mapping, and multi-modal storytelling and research, including podcasts? Omeka? Scalar? Tableau Public, Manifold? What use might students of textual editing make of the text-encoding initiative and new modes of publication? 

Criteria

Awards are based predominantly on the scholarly merit of the application and/or the contribution the project will make to the development of a pedagogical infrastructure for digital humanities at the UW as well as on the level of preparation demonstrated by applicants to undertake the project. Projects do not necessarily have to be completed during the summer fellowship term.

Terms of Award

Each awardee will receive $10,000 in summer salary (plus benefits).

Faculty are encouraged to request support of up to $5,000 total in three broad categories: 1) collaborators, contributors, and hourly support (for example, a fixed price agreement for website development and hourly support for graduate and undergraduate students); 2) digital tools (for example, hardware and software for purchase and licensing agreements); and 3) travel expenses (for example, participation in the University of Victoria's annual Digital Humanities Summer Institute or giving a talk at a conference on the digital project). Please consult with the Simpson Center administrator if you envision potential expenses not included in these categories.

Note: with regard to digital tools, hardware is understood to belong to the university and must be returned to the Simpson Center if the faculty member leaves the university.

A budget and a rationale for these expenses must be included in the proposal.

Summer Residency

Participation in the 6 weekly late afternoon meetings of the Digital Humanities Commons is an expectation of the program; this fellowship is not appropriate for those whose projects require time away from the university during the period of the meetings of the fellows; the meetings are expected to take place from the beginning of A term through July. 

Application Instructions

Complete the Application Form. Upload to the form as a single, bundled .pdf the below materials:

    • Proposal Narrative. Limit 1,750 words (approximately 6 double-spaced pages).
    • Proposal narratives should describe the project in language clear to non-specialists in their scholarly field. All narratives should address:
      1. Intellectual ambitions and objectives of the project
      2. Methodology/ies engaged
      3. Timeline (anticipated date/quarter of launch or instruction )
      4. Preparation to undertake the project if the applicant will be using digital tools*    
      5. The sustainability of the project: presentation, dissemination, and preservation of the project
      6. Pertinent intellectual property issues, with bearing on who will have rights and/or access to the knowledge/products generated by the project.
    • Additionally, narratives for pedagogy-focused projects should address:
      1. Pedagogical significance and contribution to the field through student learning; anticipated student outcomes
      2. Preparation to effectively teach using digital tools
    • Works Cited. Limit 550 words. Select primary and secondary sources that will form the basis of your archive, syllabus, or instructional framework as well as any websites or databases that serve as potential models.
    • CV. Please limit to three pages.
    • Letter of Support. Limit one, from a colleague knowledgeable about your field of research. Please ask that your letter be sent to us directly at schadmin@uw.edu.
    • Budget and Budget Rationale for Collaborators and for Digital Tools. See above. The proposed budget should be accompanied by a rationale for individual items and a note on their priority, detailing the highest to the lowest priority. If you have questions about building your budget, contact Julie Stoverink at scfiscal@uw.edu.

    *Please detail your level of competency and experience with the digital tools and platforms cited in your proposal. If you do not have existing competency or experience with the proposed tools, please outline your plans for how you will develop sufficient competency. If uncertain about where or how to develop the required skills, we encourage applicants to email the OSC in the UW Libraries to set up a consultation appointment before applying.