Initiatives

stand “at the leading edge of change” by promoting collaborative, crossdisciplinary research and transformational scholarship.

Digital Humanities

Integrating computer technologies with humanities research. Utilizing computational tools to retrieve, analyze, and visually represent data.

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Biological Futures in a Globalized World

The mandate of the Center for Biological Futures, founded Spring 2011 at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, is to foster better thinking about the present and future impacts of increases in biological knowledge and increases in worldwide use of that knowledge to manipulate and build living systems.

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Public Scholarship

Public scholarship refers to diverse modes of creating and circulating knowledge for and with publics and communities. It often involves mutually-beneficial partnerships between higher education and organizations in the public and private sectors.

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Japanese Humanities Project

Banquet scene from Scroll of the Hungry Ghosts (Gaki zôshi).

Initiated in 2010, this three-year grant from the Japan Foundation builds on the Visiting Scholars in Japanese Literature Program coordinated by the UW’s Asian Languages & Literature department since 2004. The Simpson Center also supports the Japan Humanities Project, through funding, administrative, and logistical assistance.

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B/ordering Violence: Boundaries, Gender, Indigeneity in the Americas

The 2012-2013 University of Washington Mellon Sawyer Seminar on the Borderlands builds upon the work of a multi-year, multidisciplinary collective. The Sawyer Seminar undertakes an interdisciplinary exploration of Borderlands, understood as the contact zones, imagined geographies, and discourses that produce both order and violence.