Reimagining the PhD Cohort

Reimagining the PhD Big Image

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.

2021 - 2022 Scholars

A black and white close up portrait of Paul Tubig wearing glasses.
Assistant Professor
Philosophy, Georgia Southern University
Anna Bates stands in front of plants and wears a white shirt.
Doctoral Student
Department of Philosophy
Photo of Alec Fisher in front of a palm tree.
Doctoral Candidate
Close-up portrait of a white woman with pink and brown hair and blue eyes wearing a blue shirt
Doctoral Candidate
English
A portrait of Anna Nguyen wearing glasses.
Doctoral Candidate
History
Profile of Madison Heslop standing in front of a dark background and wearing a dotted shirt.
Doctoral Candidate
Department of History
Portrait of Anis Bawarshi sitting in front of a white brick wall.
Professor, Chair
Portrait of Charles LaPorte wearing glasses and standing in front of a tree.
Professor
Portrait of Linda Nash sitting in front of a bookcase.
Professor
Department of History
Portrait of Lynn Thomas wearing glasses and yellow dangle earrings.
Professor
History
Sara Goering professional photo smiling at the camera, blurred trees in the background, wearing a blue blazer, necklace, and hair pulled back
Professor
Philosophy
Portrait of Michael Blake wearing a suit and sitting outside.
Professor
Department of Philosophy

2018 - 2019 Reimagining the Humanities PhD Scholar

Angela Durán Real holds a pink fan while standing in front of water.

Angela Durán Real (she/her/hers)

Doctoral Candidate

2018 Mellon Collaborative Summer Fellowship for Public Projects in the Humanities

Heritage Language Teaching and Learning Beyond Bars

This project with Alan-Michael Weatherford will develop a co-taught heritage-learner and pedagogical methods course through participatory and horizontal modes of civic engagement. The impetus behind such a course stems from a research question: How can we utilize and collaborate with the knowledge that incarcerated communities already produce to create the necessary structures that make college education in prison sustainable? By collaboratively working with the Hispanic population inside the Monroe Correctional Complex, this project facilitates understanding of how to build communities of learning inside the prison in ways that make them sustainable and perhaps even self-sustaining.

2015 Mellon Community College Fellowship for Reaching New Publics

Advisor: Anthony Geist (Spanish & Portuguese Studies)
Mentor: Asha Tran (Spanish, South Seattle College)

Angela and her faculty mentor designed a survey for two-year college students to better understand their perceptions of study abroad and to support access to these programs.