1. Funding Opportunities
  2. Crossdisciplinary Research Clusters

For Faculty

Blocks spelling Funding

 

 

Fall Funding Round opens Friday, October 10, 2025. 

Fall Funding Round deadline is Friday, November 7, 2025.

 

 

 

 

Crossdisciplinary Research Clusters

Applications accepted for both fall and spring funding rounds.
Note: You must complete the required budget spreadsheet attached below.

Eligibility

Must be led by tenure-track faculty. We encourage a collaborative team of 2-3 faculty representing different departments to be in charge of the project.

Criteria

Crossdisciplinary Research Clusters are intended to seed new scholarly activity and develop further pathways for collaboration by bringing together UW faculty and graduate students from different departments and disciplines who share research interests. As such, clusters should have interdepartmental composition and organization. 

Projects in this category may vary widely in form and scale: innovative models beyond the speaker series are encouraged, as are clusters that develop emerging fields and communities of inquiry, crossdisciplinary or crossdepartmental curricula (graduate certificates, for example), and collaborative publications.

Crossdisciplinary Research Clusters should seed new and vital research activity and are not meant to provide ongoing support for existing programs.

Terms of Award

Awards of financial and administrative support vary according to requests and needs. Typically requests and awards range between $6,000 and $25,000. A research budget in the amount of $1,500 may be awarded to the principal investigator when substantial organizational work or extra teaching is involved.  

We typically support crossdisciplinary research clusters for a maximum of three years; proposals must be submitted for review during our funding round process for each year of support subsequent to the initial award.

Meeting Before Applying

We recommend that those applying for funding in this category consult with the Simpson Center in advance of the application deadline. To request a meeting, please contact Rachel Arteaga at rarteaga@uw.edu.

Application Instructions

Complete the Application Form. Please upload the proposal materials as a single, bundled PDF and the budget spreadsheet as a single Excel file.

  • Proposal Narratives. Limit 1,750 words. Proposal narratives should address:
    1. The focus of the cluster and the activities to be funded, in detail
    2. Near-term goals, and longer-term ambitions if cluster is intended to lead to other forms of collaboration and project development
    3. A list of three or more participating faculty and graduate student
  • CV. Include organizer(s) curriculum vita(e). Limited to 5 pages per organizer. Optional: key organizers may also be represented by short bios included in an appendix.
  • Budget. Download the required budget spreadsheet. Complete it using the guidance included and submit it through our Application Form with your completed proposal. If you have questions about building your budget, contact Julie Stoverink at scfiscal@uw.edu.