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.
2021 - 2022 Scholars
2019 - 2020 Reimagining the Humanities PhD Scholar
Erin Gilbert (she/her/hers)
Forage Narratives: Nature Walks and Knowledge Co-production
This project aims to create nature walks in public spaces—public parks, museum grounds, city streets—guided by teams of community members who will draw participants’ attention to particular plants and discuss some different names, uses, memories, or ways of knowing those particular plants. The walks will include writing sessions that will invite participants to record their own ways of knowing the plants they encountered.