Digital Humanities Summer Fellowships

scholars in the fellowship program having a lively discussion at the conference table

The Simpson Center offers annual summer fellowships for faculty and doctoral students to pursue research projects that use digital technologies in innovative and intensive ways and/or explore the historical, social, aesthetic, and cross-cultural implications of digital cultures. The program has three primary goals:

  • To animate knowledge—using rich media, dynamic databases, and visualization tools
  • To circulate knowledge—among diverse publics
  • To understand digital culture—historically, theoretically, aesthetically, and generatively

UW faculty and doctoral candidates are eligible to apply either on an individual basis or in teams for Digital Humanities Summer Fellowships every fall. Where research in the humanities is often undertaken by a single scholar, this program enables faculty and graduate students to collaborate with each other as well as with designers, information technologists, and librarians. Applications from scholars using the open-source multimodal authoring and publishing platforms are particularly encouraged; the Simpson Center is an affiliate of the Alliance for Networking Visual Culture. Review additional eligibility and application information for faculty and graduate students

Up to 8 scholars—4 faculty and 4 doctoral students—will be selected each year; they will be required to be in residence for 6-8 weeks during the summer and will meet weekly to share their research. In addition to summer salary, each will have a research budget that can be used for expenses such as hourly support and software.

The Simpson Center gratefully acknowledges the support of a National Endowment for the Humanities Challenge Grant and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation as well as many donors to the endowment which is underwriting these fellowships.

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Cohort Archives

2024 - 2025 Digital Humanities Summer Fellows

Oya Rose Aktaş
Doctoral Candidate
History
Jesse Cavalari
Doctoral Candidate
History
Heekyoung Cho looks to the left while wearing glasses.
Associate Professor
Asian Languages & Literature
Amelia Lehosit
Doctoral Candidate
English
LaShawnDa Pittman
Associate Professor
American Ethnic Studies
Anna Preus stands outside wearing a dark jacket and striped shirt.
Assistant Professor
English
Adair Rounthwaite sits on a blue chair wearing a pink sweater.
Associate Professor and Chair
Art History
Diana Flores Ruíz
Assistant Professor
Cinema & Media Studies
Jingrui Yan
Graduate Student
Cinema & Media Studies

2023 - 2024 Digital Humanities Summer Fellow

Melinda Cohoon looks into the camera while standing in front of a dark background.

Melinda Cohoon (she/her/hers)

Doctoral Candidate

Digital Iran Reloaded: Iranian Censorship of Citizens and the Gaming Industry

During the summer of 2020, the Digital Iran project team investigated how videogames are curated by state and non-state agents to produce discourse, narratives, and counter-narratives about Iran. Digital Iran Reloaded deepens the scope of the original project by emphasizing the experiences of Iranian gamers. The project will specifically dive into circumvention tools used to navigate oppressive censorship and surveillance tactics by state agents in Iran and US economic sanctions. To do so, the project will elucidate reactive and proactive censorship measures by mapping previously used and current (anti)censorship, (anti)surveillance, and strategies to access the internet and online video games in Iran. The digital component of the project will be showcased as appendices for the dissertation "Affective Entanglements and Precarious Lifeworlds: Iranian Gamers in Culture'' on the project's site.