For Graduate Students
Digital & Data Humanities Summer Fellowship
Application Dates
Opens: January 20, 2027
Due: February 5, 2027
Description
Digital & Data Humanities Summer Fellowships support scholars pursuing innovative work in the digital and data humanities, and work that explores the cultural, social, and historical implications of digital technologies. Projects should engage scholarship in the humanities and humanistic social sciences, and contribute to advancing specialist and/or more public knowledge. Applicants may engage with a wide range of digital techniques and media, computational approaches, and data analytics.
This program welcomes applications from both newcomers and veterans in the field of digital and data humanities. We encourage applications from faculty and doctoral students eager to be in intellectual conversation with a multi-disciplinary cohort of fellows.
The Simpson Center gratefully acknowledges the support of a National Endowment for the Humanities Challenge Grant as well as other donors to the endowments which underwrite these summer fellowships.
Eligibility
UW tenure-track faculty at all ranks, and UW doctoral students who have completed their master’s degrees by the deadline for application are eligible for this fellowship.
Both individual and collaborative projects are eligible for support. Collaborative projects are those involving two or three applicants (for example, two graduate students working together, or a faculty member working with two doctoral students). Each member of a collaborative project is expected to be a full participant in the project and will receive a full fellowship if the proposal is accepted.
Applicants who have already received digital and data humanities summer fellowships may apply again in subsequent years. Projects may be supported over multiple years, but fellows must apply for each summer of support separately and make a compelling case for the impact of additional funding.
Applicants interested in both the Digital & Data Humanities Summer Fellowship and the Faculty Summer Book Fellowship may apply separately for each. They may only be awarded one. Faculty applying to both summer fellowship opportunities should indicate in their proposal narratives which they prefer and why.
Criteria
The review committee bases its award decisions on assessment of 1) the project’s scholarly merit and envisioned contribution to specialist and/or more public knowledge; and 2) the project’s feasibility. For more detail on these two sets of criteria, please see “Proposal Narrative” below. In the case of collaborative projects, the review committee will also consider whether the scale of the project and the scope of the work plan for summer 2027 is commensurate with the allocation of two or three fellowships.
Terms of Award
Faculty awardees will receive $10,000 in summer salary, plus benefits; graduate awardees will receive an award of $7,500, with no benefits or tuition. The explicit intent of this support is to allow fellows to devote much of their work time during summer 2027 to their proposed projects. It is an expectation that fellows will not have significant competing work demands such as teaching during the month of July.
In addition, faculty applicants may request project support funds of up to $5,000, and graduate applicants may request support of up to $3,500. Each collaborator in a joint project may request these sums. Support can be distributed across three broad categories:
1) digital tools (for example, hardware and software for purchase and licensing agreements) and training (online course fees, workshop costs, and, if necessary, travel to in-person educational opportunities);
2) research travel expenses (for example, giving a talk at a conference on the digital project); and
3) limited contributors and hourly support (for example, a fixed price agreement for website development, or hourly support for graduate and undergraduate students responsible for specific tasks).
Please use the budget template provided below to indicate your plan for using project support funds and be sure to offer a rationale for each request in your proposal narrative.
Note that projects do not necessarily have to be completed during the summer fellowship term.
Campus Meetings and Summer Residency
Award recipients are required to participate in person in all meetings of the summer fellowship cohort. Meetings will be held twice per week during the month of July. This fellowship is therefore not appropriate for those who are unable to meet on campus during July 2027.
In addition, as a way of introducing the cohort and showcasing fellows’ accomplishments, one gathering will be held on campus in spring and another in fall. Please note that tentative dates for those meetings have been set as follows:
Introductory Meeting: Friday, May 28, 2027
Project Showcase: Friday, October 15, 2027
Digital and data humanities projects stand to benefit from soliciting constructive input at every stage in their evolution. To that end, we strongly encourage all applicants to meet with Digital & Data Humanities Lead Eric Johnson (ejred@uw.edu) prior to submitting their proposals. Johnson convenes the fellowship program and leads the cohort meetings. He is available to meet with potential applicants to discuss topics including research questions and methodologies; databases, sources, and other inputs; platform and technology choices; scope; assessment of achievable goals; and technology skills acquisition. Applications will be reviewed by the Simpson Center Digital & Data Humanities Review Committee.
Once completed, applications should be submitted through the Application Form (will open for the winter funding round on Wednesday, January 20, with a submission deadline of Friday, February 5). The proposal narrative, bibliography, and CV(s) should be uploaded in a single, bundled PDF; the budget spreadsheet should be uploaded as a separate Excel file.
Collaborative projects should be submitted as a one application.
Proposal Narrative. Limit 1,750 words for individual projects, and 2,250 words for collaborative projects.
Proposal narratives should describe the project in language that is clear to academics outside of the applicants’ scholarly field(s). All narratives should address two sets of criteria.
1. The scholarly merit and envisioned contribution to specialist and/or more public knowledge, which may include discussion of:
- intellectual ambitions and objectives of the project;
- long-term vision for the project;
- methodologies engaged and reasons for using them; and
- engagement with particular communities, public or scholarly debates, or outside institutions.
2. The feasibility of the proposal, which should include discussion of:
- detailed timeline and breakdown of work to be done and deliverables to be completed during the fellowship term;
- readiness to undertake the project, including details on the applicants’ current competency and experience with the digital tools and platforms cited in the proposal, any prior training that is relevant, and concrete plans for filling skill gaps in order to develop the necessary competency, and, in the case of collaborative projects, the specific responsibilities, qualifications, and contributions of each collaborator;
- plans for disseminating the project and its findings, and ensuring the project’s long-term sustainability;
- pertinent intellectual property and human-subjects issues, with bearing on who will have rights and/or access to the knowledge/products generated by the project; and
- rationale for project support funds requested.
Faculty also applying for other Simpson Center summer fellowship opportunities, should provide a brief explanation of which fellowship they prefer and why.
Bibliography. Limit 550 words. Select primary and secondary sources directly related to the project.
CV. Faculty CVs should be limited to five pages; graduate student CVs to three pages. Collaborative projects must include a CV for each applicant.
Budget and Budget Rationale. Download the appropriate required budget spreadsheet. Please note that there are two different budget spreadsheets for applicants, one for graduate students and one for faculty. Complete it using the guidance included and submit it through our Application Form. Collaborative projects should submit a single budget, combining the support requests for each applicant. If you have questions about building your budget, contact Simpson Center Administrator Julie Tarr-Stoverink (scfiscal@uw.edu).
Please contact Digital & Data Humanities Lead Eric Johnson (ejred@uw.edu), with any questions about this fellowship opportunity.