Society of Scholars Faculty Fellowship

Eligibility

UW tenure-track faculty (all ranks)

• Assistant professors must have served for at least one year (not including acting or visiting assistant professorships) before their application.
• Faculty who have held a Society of Scholars fellowship are eligible to apply again after three years.
• Faculty who are awarded a Society of Scholars fellowship may not co-lead a Simpson Center supported collaborative research project during the fellowship year.
• While we encourage applicants to other funding categories to meet with us before submitting a proposal, this is typically not necessary for faculty applicants to the Society of Scholars. For questions regarding this fellowship program, including matters of eligibility, or to request example proposals for review, please contact Simpson Center Associate Director Rachel Arteaga. 

Description

The Society of Scholars supports faculty in pursuing their research and sharing their individual projects-in-progress in the multidisciplinary, bi-weekly forum of the fellowship cohort—which typically is composed of eight to nine tenure-track faculty members, at all ranks, and three dissertating doctoral students—over the course of the academic year.

Applications will be reviewed by the Simpson Center Executive Board.

Criteria

Awards are based on the scholarly merit of the individual applications. Scholarship likely to contribute to intellectual exchange among a diverse group of colleagues is especially encouraged.  

To assess scholarly merit, we draw on criteria used by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the American Council for Learned Societies (ACLS) for the evaluation of fellowship proposals:

• The intellectual significance of the proposed project; the potential of the project to advance the field or fields of study in which it is proposed and make an original and significant contribution to knowledge.
• The quality and innovativeness of the proposal with regard to its methodology, scope, theoretical framework, and grounding in the relevant scholarly literature.
• The clarity of the conception, definition, organization, and description of the project.

Preference will be given to faculty who have not received a Meet the Moment Faculty Summer Fellowship in 2026. If you receive a Society of Scholars Fellowship in this round, you are not eligible to apply for our upcoming 2027 Faculty Summer Book Fellowship program.

Terms of Award

• Course release/replacement costs. Faculty fellowship recipients receive release time from teaching for two courses (preferably in a single quarter). For a copy of the course release/buyout form, please email schadmin@uw.edu.
• Research funds. Each fellow in the Society of Scholars receives a $1,500 research budget, administered through a reimbursement process.
• Residency requirement. In-person participation in the biweekly Society of Scholars means that this fellowship is not appropriate for those whose projects require time away from the university or those who are unable to meet on the designated time throughout the academic year.
• Additional requirements. All faculty who receive fellowships are expected to submit an application for a fellowship to a national agency or foundation (such as NEH, ACLS, or the Guggenheim Foundation) or a residency site (such as the National Humanities Center). Please note: people who receive external fellowships may qualify for additional research support from the Simpson Center.