Reimagining the PhD Cohort

In July 2015, the Simpson Center launched Reimagining the Humanities PhD and Reaching New Publics with the generous support of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The conviction animating this initiative was that doctoral education, especially at a public university, must be guided by a capacious vision of its fundamental purpose: to contribute to the public good. From 2015-2021, the program prepared UW doctoral students in the humanities for this task by meaningfully connecting them to the diverse, access-oriented institutions of higher education in the Seattle District community colleges, and by supporting the development of both doctoral students’ public projects and publicly engaged graduate seminars taught by UW faculty in the humanities. Find out more about our programming below.