"Black Digital Studies in the Age of Technofascism" emerged as a crossdisciplinary research cluster intent on exploring the relationship between race and technology. In the era of AI bias, attacks on DEI, and enormously powerful tech companies, their work asks two primary questions. First, what does it mean to be Black when engaging with digital technologies whose design and distribution is shaped by rising authoritarianism and ongoing racial injustice?

In late April, the Simpson Center sponsored a Fire Humanities panel at the University of Washington's Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture. The panel featured five scholars discussing their work researching fire and smoke, creating art, and engaging the public. All panelists are contributors to the Fire Humanities edited book project, born out of the University of Idaho’s Confluence Lab. 

The Simpson Center is delighted to celebrate the news this month of a U.S. federal judge’s ruling that devastating cuts to the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), made in April 2025, are "unconstitutional." The judge has ordered the restoration of funding.

On a Wednesday in April, the Sydney, Australia-based author and translator Tiffany Tsao sat in on Professor Sasha Senderovich’s class on contemporary global literature to discuss her novel, The Majesties. As students formed an impromptu line to request her signature inside their personal copies, one commented that he had never had a book signed by an author before. This was an eye-opening moment for Senderovich.

We are excited to share that the University of Washington has been awarded a grant from the Mellon Foundation to support a Sawyer Seminar focused on rethinking academic freedom, democracy, and the university through Indigenous and decolonial approaches to knowledge, art, and institutional governance.

The Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities is delighted to announce the appointment of Lynn M. Thomas as its next director, commencing in the Fall Quarter of 2025. Professor Thomas succeeds Kathleen Woodward, whose transformative leadership shaped 25 years of humanities research and collaboration at the Simpson Center.

The Simpson Center for the Humanities announces our Collaborative Project, Faculty Writing Group and Retreat, and Graduate Research Cluster awards for 2025-2026 after receiving many strong proposals from University of Washington faculty and graduate students during our most recent funding round.

Established in 2021, in the midst of the global pandemic, the Faculty Summer Fellowship program at the Simpson Center for the Humanities has to date supported 45 faculty from all ranks and from across the humanities and social sciences at the University of Washington. The fellowships offer targeted research support to UW tenure-track faculty as they complete scholarly projects along the promotional ladder within their academic departments.