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

2017 - 2018 Reimagining the Humanities PhD Scholar

P. Joshua Griffin sits in front of a gray wall wearing glasses, a blue shirt, and a dark jacket.

P. Joshua Griffin (he/him/his)

Assistant Professor

The Kivalina Archive: Applying the Climate Humanities Across Multiple Publics

My dissertation is a critical, engaged ethnography of climate-change displacement and contemporary indigenous politics in the context of an intergenerational struggle for environmental justice, self-determination, and a future in Kivalina—a 460-person Iñupiaq community on a tiny island along the Northwest Coast of Alaska, 85 miles above the Arctic Circle. This project will lead to the production of multimedia archival content of scholarly, popular, and applied interests for a diversity of publics, both within Kivalina and around the world, including environmental humanists, social scientists, climate adaptation planners, policymakers, social movements, and other frontline communities responding to the impacts of climate change.