The Simpson Center administers two funding rounds per year, in Fall and Spring Quarters. Both fall and spring rounds support the same funding term, July through June of the following year. Grant applications are reviewed and selected for support by the Simpson Center Executive Board. Proposed projects should be led by UW faculty and/or graduate students, require $1,000 or more in funding, and be planned for the subsequent academic year.

Applications for some categories are accepted in both the fall and spring; however, some categories are only open during one funding round, as noted below.

Note: Co-Sponsored Events and Barclay Simpson Prize Nominations do not fall within our Fall and Spring Funding Category deadlines. To learn more, please refer to the full descriptions for Barclay Simpson Prize for Scholarship in Public, Co-Sponsored UW Events, and Co-Sponsored Community Events. The best way to stay updated on deadlines for funding opportunities is to subscribe to our newsletter, where we announce when funding opportunities open and close.

Special Category: Book Fellowships

• Second and Third Book Fellowships support for associate and full professors to give intensive attention to second and third book manuscripts that are near completion

Fellowships (Fall Only)

• Digital Humanities Summer Fellowship - support for four faculty pursuing 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.
• Society of Scholars Research Fellowships - The Society of Scholars is an intellectual community in which eight faculty and three doctoral students from across disciplines in the humanities and interpretive social sciences contribute to and learn from one another’s work in bi-weekly meetings throughout the academic year.

Collaborative Projects

• Colloquia and Conferences include speaker series, international research, and working conferences, and are selected for support based on their crossdisciplinary and interdisciplinary focus.
• Video Conferences and Colloquia support crossdisciplinary and interdisciplinary symposia, colloquia, and conferences of various scales (working conferences, international research conferences, etc.) in digital formats
• Crossdisciplinary Research Clusters seed new collaborations between faculty and graduate students who share research interests.
• Large Scale Collaborations fund extended, crossdisciplinary collaborative projects that are often aligned with Simpson Center initiatives.
• Research Methods Exploration Award supports research projects of a faculty member that would benefit from cross-disciplinary engagement with a faculty member in another field.
• Faculty Summer Reading Groups bring UW faculty together in conversation on an area of shared intellectual interest, and serve to deepen the knowledge of the topic among participants.
• We are eager for new, unconventional projects which don’t fit neatly into one of our other categories but which align with the Simpson Center’s mission. Please contact Rachel Arteaga to discuss.

Lecture & Award Nominations

• Katz Distinguished Lectures in the Humanities (Fall Only) - The Solomon Katz Endowment in the Humanities supports up to three lectures each academic year: one by a member of the UW faculty and two by visiting scholars. Nominees should have excellent scholarly credentials and speaking abilities, and their work should appeal to a broad audience—faculty, students, and the general public.
• Barclay Simpson Prize for Scholarship in Public - The Barclay Simpson Prize for Scholarship in Public, which carries an award of $10,000, honors UW faculty from humanities and social sciences departments who have been immersed in excellent and intellectually challenging project-based public scholarship and have written about it for an academic audience or a public audience, expanding the impact of the work. Prize winners also contribute to the development of public scholarship at the UW by leading an opening workshop session for the Barclay Simpson Scholars in Public Summer Fellows, offering guidance and feedback on student projects. ​​

Co-Sponsored Events (Rolling)

• Co-Sponsored UW Event - Faculty members may request small discretionary grants (maximum $750) to support opportunities such as visiting speakers and conferences.
• Co-Sponsored Community Events - Grants in the range of $200-$500 may also be given to support co-sponsored community events that include UW faculty or graduate students speaking at or otherwise collaborating with cultural institutions in Seattle and the surrounding areas.

Research Support for Major External Fellowship Awards (Rolling)

• Research Support for Major External Fellowship Awards offers special support for faculty who have been formally awarded ACLS Fellowships, NEH Fellowships, or Guggenheim Fellowships.