The Simpson Center for the Humanities biannually invites nominations of University of Washington faculty for the Barclay Simpson Prize for Scholarship in Public, which carries an award of $10,000. The award honors Barclay Simpson’s transformative gift in endowing the Simpson Center in memory of his father and highlights one of the center’s core missions: to foster the humanities as a public good. We encourage the nomination of faculty from the humanities and humanistic social sciences who have been immersed in excellent and intellectually challenging project-based public scholarship and have written about their research for a public audience, expanding the impact of the work. Prize winners also contribute to the development of public scholarship at the University of Washington by leading an opening workshop session for the Barclay Simpson Scholars in Public Summer Fellows, offering guidance and feedback on student projects.
The four faculty members who have thus far been awarded the Barclay Simpson Prize for Scholarship in Public attest to the rich variety of meaningful public scholarship that is taking place at the University of Washington:
- 2021: Ralina Joseph (Communication), on “Interrupting Privilege” and intergenerational antiracism dialogues
- 2019: Gillian Harkins (English), on education in prison
- 2017: Michelle Habell-Pallán (Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies), on Latinx artists’ contributions to American popular music
- 2015: Jim Gregory (History), on the history of the civil rights and labor movements in Seattle
