Social Sciences And Humanities Research Council Research Articles

Community-campus partnerships, collective impact, and poverty reduction

This article describes a unique Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC)-funded project in which a community–campus partnership is making progress in moving the needle on complex issues such as poverty. The project identified various models of community campus partnerships that help leverage collective impact efforts in poverty reduction. One model involves a center for community–university research, while others revolve around champions in the community or university who spearhead the initiatives and leverage successful partnerships into research activities. Concurrently, the campus and community partners have engaged in research with a goal of having an impact on poverty reduction. The models are examined in terms of components of collective impact: a common agenda, shared measurement, mutually reinforcing activities, continuous communication, and a backbone organization. Factors were identified that support and impede collective impact, such as the importance of a strong backbone organization, and vulnerability to personnel changes.

Using information and communication technologies as a partnership enabler: challenges and recommendations

The Reciprocal Learning in Teacher Education and School Education between Canada and China is a partnership research program funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) of Canada, and nine educational institutions from Canada and China are involved in this program. Since the beginning of the program, a variety of information and communication technologies (ICT) have been employed to support different aspects of the research program. This paper intends to not only report what has been experienced by the ICT Team, but also have discussions on the use of ICT in cross-cultural partnership research programs. It is recommended that a number of factors, such as cultural, geographical, social and political, should be understood and considered for a successful partnership program.

Bringing Indigenous Kamchatka to Google Earth: Collaborative Digital Mapping with the Itelmen Peoples

This project is part of the Innovations in Ethnographic Mapping and Indigenous Cartographies project, funded by a Google Research Grant, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Insight Development Grant, with additional funding from the National Science Foundation, the Arctic Social Sciences Program, and the US Fulbright Scholar Program.

Using information and communication technologies as a partnership enabler: challenges and recommendations

The Reciprocal Learning in Teacher Education and School Education between Canada and China is a partnership research program funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) of Canada, and nine educational institutions from Canada and China are involved in this program. Since the beginning of the program, a variety of information and communication technologies (ICT) have been employed to support different aspects of the research program. This paper intends to not only report what has been experienced by the ICT Team, but also have discussions on the use of ICT in cross-cultural partnership research programs. It is recommended that a number of factors, such as cultural, geographical, social and political, should be understood and considered for a successful partnership program.

From Technical Standards to Research Communities: Implementing New Knowledge Environments Gatherings, Sydney 2014 and Whistler 2015

On December 8, 2014, researchers, students, librarians, and other participants gathered together in Sydney, Australia at the State Library of New South Wales for the 7th annual Implementing New Knowledge Environments (INKE) Birds-of-a-Feather conference, “Research Foundations for Understanding Books and Reading in the Digital Age.” On January 27 and 28, 2015, a similar group of stakeholders met in Whistler, BC, Canada, at the Nita Lake Lodge for the second year to discuss “Sustaining Partnerships to Transform Scholarly Production.” The events were hosted by INKE and sponsored by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC). Drawing from these two gatherings, the articles collected in this latest issue of Scholarly and Research Communication reflect an ongoing conversation in SRC (see 5.4), on new ways humanities researchers, publishers, and policy makers can collaborate effectively to make the most of the new affordances of computational tools and methods.

Conflict and Performance in Channels: A Comparative Synthesis of Empirical Findings

32 p. ; Includes bibliographical references (pp. 22-26). ; September 2015. ; The authors gratefully acknowledge the generous help of several researchers who have shared their data with little urging. We would also like to thank Hamed Qahri-Saremi, and the participants of the May 2015 Value in the Vertical (VIV) Workshop and the Marketing BBL Seminar series at McMaster University, for their valuable comments and feedbacks. This research has been partially funded by research grants awarded to Dr. Sourav Ray by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) of Canada.

Introduction: "Building Partnerships to Transform Scholarly Publishing"

On February 5th-6th 2014 researchers, students, and other participants gathered together in Whistler, BC, Canada to discuss issues relating to scholarly publishing in Canada. The day and a half long meeting, “Building Partnerships to Transform Scholarly Publishing,” welcomed participants representing several Canadian libraries and universities, publishers, and scholarly organizations, among others. The event was hosted by Implementing New Knowledge Environments (INKE; inke.ca) and sponsored by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC).

Justice for Some: Regressive Effects of Increased Access to Small Claim Courts

Small claims courts enable parties to resolve their disputes relatively quickly and cheaply. Parties often represent themselves and trials – should they occur – are typically confined to a single day. This court’s limiting feature, by design, is that the alleged damages must be small, in accordance with the jurisdictional limit at that time. One might expect that a large increase in the upper limit would increase the court’s accessibility to a larger and potentially more diverse pool of litigants. We examine this proposition by studying the effect of the Ontario Small Claims Court increasing its jurisdictional range. Prior to January 2010, claims between $0 and $10,000 could be litigated in the small claims court. After January 2010, this jurisdiction expanded greatly to include all claims between $0 and $25,000. We study patterns in over 600,000 small claims disputes over the period 2006-2013 and observe three main results following the increase in the jurisdictional range. Two of these results are counterintuitive. First, (as one might expect) the average damages claim increased, from an average of approximately $3,500 before the jurisdictional change to $7,000 after the jurisdictional change. Second, the number of claims increased only modestly after the jurisdictional change, by less than 4%. Third – and most importantly – the jurisdictional change resulted in fewer claims from poorer plaintiffs. The drop is most pronounced for plaintiffs from the poorest 10% of the population. These findings, taken together, suggest that legislative attempts to make the courts more accessible may have unintended regressive consequences. 1 Both authors are faculty at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law. The authors would like to thank the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) for its generous research support. Alison Harvison Young, Ed Morgan, Eric Posner, Michael Trebilcock, and participants at the STILE Law & Economics Workshop in Naples, Italy provided helpful suggestions in the development of this project. Elizabeth White provided excellent research assistance. All remaining errors are our own.

Erasing the Social from Social Science: The Intellectual Costs of Boundary-Work and the Canadian Institute of Health Research

In 2009, Canadian social science research funding underwent a transition. Social science health-research was shifted from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) to the Canadian Institute of Health Research (CIHR), an agency previously dominated by natural and medical science. This paper examines the role of health-research funding structures in legitimizing and/or delimiting what counts as ‘good’ social science health research. Engaging Gieryn’s (1983) notion of ‘boundary-work’ and interviews with qualitative social science graduate students, it investigates how applicants developed proposals for CIHR. Findings show that despite claiming to be interdisciplinary, the practical mechanisms through which CIHR funding is distributed reinforce rigid boundaries of what counts as legitimate health research. These boundaries are reinforced by applicants who felt pressure to prioritize what they perceived was what funders wanted (accommodating natural-science research culture), resulting in erased, elided, and disguised social science theories and methods common for ‘good social science.’

A Canadian Community-University Research Alliance: Focus on Poverty and Social Inclusion for Psychiatric Consumer-Survivors

This commentary serves as a snapshot of a study midway through data collection and outlines some preliminary results. The purpose of the study is to better understand inter-relationships between poverty and social inclusion for psychiatric survivors. The study is allied with the Community–University Research Alliance (CURA), a Canadian government research grant program administered by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC). Participants were stratified based on housing type (housed vs. homeless) and employment status (employed and/or a student vs. unemployed). The sample includes 380 individuals (190 men and 190 women), with a psychiatric diagnosis and/or addiction issue for a minimum of one year. The four-year longitudinal study combines both quantitative (individual structured interview) and qualitative (focus group) data collection methods and preliminary quantitative analysis of the first-year data is underway. Upon its completion, it is hoped that the CURA study will yield results useful for informing policy and practice influencing health and life outcomes for psychiatric survivors and help determine the most effective use of resources to promote social inclusion.

Towards visual analytics for digging into human rights violations data

Towards visual analytics for digging into human rights violations data

The digital reading path: researching modes and multidirectionality with iPads

AbstractThis paper reports a study that examines the integration of tablet technologies such as iPads into literacy lessons to investigate how reading and meaning‐making occur within this digital medium. Specifically in this paper, we discuss the concept of reading paths as applied to physical and cognitive planes of meaning‐making. The paper reports on data collected as part of a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) funded project involving researchers from Canada, the United States and Australia. The study is currently under way in schools in the three different countries where the researchers are observing students in classrooms in primary and secondary schools. The research is designed with a mixed methods approach coding video footage of dyads to enable close study of their interaction during literacy tasks incorporating iPads. Our findings show that the affordances of touch technology allow for multimodal, multidirectional reading paths. By tracking students' interactions with the digital platform through touch, it is possible to see navigation as evidence of the relationship between material and cognitive processes, which fosters metatextual awareness. These aspects of modes and new literacies construct a dynamic materiality for students' reading and writing. As a result, we propose that current awareness of the mode of gesture needs to be expanded to take into account haptic ways of learning.

PARAMETRIC MODELLING (BIM) FOR THE DOCUMENTATION OF VERNACULAR CONSTRUCTION METHODS: A BIM MODEL FOR THE COMMISSARIAT BUILDING, OTTAWA, CANADA

Abstract. Whether a house of worship or a simple farmhouse, the fabrication of a building reveals both the unspoken cultural aspirations of the builder and the inevitable exigencies of the construction process. In other-words, why buildings are made is intimately and inevitably associated with how buildings are made. Nowhere is this more evident than in vernacular architecture. At the Carleton Immersive Media Studio (CIMS) we are concerned that the de-population of Canada's rural areas, paucity of specialized tradespersons, and increasing complexity of building codes threaten the sustainability of this invaluable cultural resource. For current and future generations, the quantitative and qualitative values of traditional methods of construction are essential for an inclusive cultural memory. More practically, and equally pressing, an operational knowledge of these technologies is essential for the conservation of our built heritage. To address these concerns, CIMS has launched a number of research initiatives over the past five years that explore novel protocols for the documentation and dissemination of knowledge related to traditional methods of construction. Our current project, Cultural Diversity and Material Imagination in Canadian Architecture (CDMICA), made possible through funding from Canada's Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), explores the potential of building information modelling (BIM) within the context of a web-based environment. In this paper, we discuss our work-to-date on the development of a web-based library of BIM details that is referenced to ''typical'' assemblies culled from 19C and early 20C construction manuals. The parametric potential of these ''typical'' details is further refined by evidence from the documentation of ''specific'' details studied during comprehensive surveys of extant heritage buildings. Here, we consider a BIM of the roof truss assembly of one of the oldest buildings in Canada's national capital – the Commissariat Building and current home to the Bytown Museum – as a case study within the CDMICA project.

Sunera Thobani: A Very Public Intellectual

<p>Sunera Thobani is a formidable activist and scholar. Through decades of activism and scholarship, spanning the globe from East Africa to Canada, via England and the United States, she has developed and applied a critical race feminist and anti-imperialist analysis of world capitalism and colonialism. As an activist, she is probably best known as the former President of the National Action Committee on the Status of Woman, Canada’s then largest feminist organization. During her tenure she sought to make anti-racism central to feminist struggles. In her academic work, she has developed critical race theory to cast new light on the dynamics around globalization, violence against women, reproductive technologies, social programmes, immigration and nation-building, and colonialism and war. In her research and teaching, she consistently combines her scholarship with community activism, including through her work at the Centre for Race, Autobiography, Gender and Age (RAGA), which she directs and which features active collaboration among community activists and university scholars and students. She is a founding member of the Canada-wide alliance, Researchers and Academics of Colour for Equity.</p><p>Sunera Thobani was educated at universities in England, the United States and received her PhD from Simon Fraser University in Canada. She is the author of numerous articles, both scholarly and for a more general public. Arguably her most well-known intervention is “War Frenzy,” a 2001 speech calling on women across Canada to oppose the Canadian support of the American-led invasion into Afghanistan. This intervention is now reproduced in a book of Great Canadian Speeches (2004). A frequently invited speaker in both her academic and activist capacities, she has addressed audiences across Canada, as well as in Austria, China, Denmark, England, India, Malaysia, Mexico, the Palestine Occupied Territories, the Philippines, and the United States. Sunera Thobani has co-edited several books on critical race theory and feminism and is the author of the widely-read Exalted Subjects: Studies in the Making of Race and Nation in Canada (2007). Her forthcoming Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) supported book is tentatively titled <em>Media Representations of Gender and the War on Terror</em>.</p><p><br />This interview was conducted by William K. Carroll in Vancouver, British Columbia in February 2012.</p>

Building a Policy-Oriented Research Partnership for Knowledge Mobilization and Knowledge Transfer: The Case of the Canadian Metropolis Project

The aim of this paper is to examine government–university–community partnerships for knowledge mobilization (KM) and knowledge transfer (KT) in the area of immigration and settlement research using the illustrative case of the Canadian Metropolis Project. The Metropolis Project in Canada began in 1995 with the goal of enhancing policy-oriented research capacity for immigration and settlement and developing ways to better use this research in government decision-making. Core funding for this partnership was provided jointly by Citizenship Immigration Canada (CIC), a department of the Government of Canada and the primary social science granting agency, the Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC). As of 2012, and subsequent to three successful funding phases, the decision was made to end government and SSHRC core funding for this initiative, however, other non-governmental funding avenues are being explored. The longevity of this partnership and the conclusion of this specific initiative present an opportunity to reflect critically on the nature of such partnerships. This paper is an attempt to identify some of the key themes, issues and challenges related to research partnerships, KM and KT. Also, with the aid of an illustrative case, it aims to specify some of the possibilities and limitations of this kind of policy relevant knowledge mobilization. Special consideration will be placed on the context in which the demand for knowledge mobilization and knowledge transfer has emerged. This examination has considerable international relevance as the Canadian Metropolis Project offers the leading example of a research partnership in the field of immigration and settlement.

Social Sciences and Humanities Research and the Public Good: A Synthesis of Presentations and Discussions

In May 2010, with the support of funds from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) of Canada, a one-day workshop, entitled, “Social Sciences and Humanities Research as a Public Good: Identifying Research Prospects for Advancing Research Among Academic and Non-Academic Discourse Communities” was held in Montreal, Québec. The workshop brought together Canadian stakeholders involved in extending the reach of research (for the public good), including those involved in open access and knowledge mobilization, as well as organizations linked to the research community, and non-academic organizations with a clear mandate to include research in their activities or to extend the reach of research. This article presents a summary of the workshop presentations and a synthesis of the workshop discussions. The article also provides a discussion of the emergent issues arising from the workshop (such as the sustainability of open access journal publishing, the challenges of knowledge mobilization, and the limited media uptake of social sciences and humanities research), areas of inquiry that these issues open up (engaged scholarship and the engaged university, faculty reward structures, and public knowledge/knowledge mobilization as areas of scholarly inquiry), and collaborative next steps for stakeholders to take, to address concerns raised and to seize opportunities to advance shared interests.

Prior learning assessment and recognition: Emergence of a Canadian community of scholars

Prior learning assessment and recognition (PLAR) is the practice of reviewing, evaluating, and acknowledging the information, skills, and understanding that adult learners have gained through experiential or self-directed (informal) learning rather than through formal education (Thomas, 2000). As our current economy and workplaces experience rapid and continuing change, PLAR offers a vital contribution to supporting lifelong and life-wide learning (Evans, 2000). Beyond significant benefits to individual adult learners in terms of confidence-building and enhanced reflective capacity, PLAR’s process translates personal and workplace learning into a portable format, a common coin suitable for public recognition in many different venues. PLAR has hence become an integral feature of lifelong learning policies around the globe and is closely linked with the implementation of national and transnational qualification frameworks (Morrissey et al., 2008).
 
 PLAR scholars have a vital role in ensuring that policy and practice in this important field is informed by innovative research. This brief report describes a workshop on scholarly PLAR research, held in Ottawa, Canada on November 6 and 7, 2010 with funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC).

The Toronto Traditional Healers Project: An Introduction

This paper offers a brief introduction to the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) sponsored research on the role of African, Caribbean, and South Asian traditional healers and their healing practices in Toronto. Ethnic minority groups, especially in the large metropolitan cities in North America, have been accessing and practicing traditional healing since the days of slavery using healing practices such as Animism, Voodoo, Orisha, Santeria and Espiritismo to support their health and wellbeing. However, the healers and their practices have been excluded from mainstream culture, and are forced underground as a result of the hegemony of Western medical models. This paper discusses the background, rationale and the context of the Toronto traditional healers project. The results and analysis of the Caribbean and the South Asian traditional healers are presented in this special issue following this introductory paper.

Extending the reach of research as a public good: Moving beyond the paradox of “zero-sum language games”

Extending the reach of research as a public good has become widely recognized as a policy priority for research funding organizations in many nations. Yet, there is little academic merit given to such work, presenting scholars with the paradox of a “zero-sum language game” in which they succeed in mobilizing knowledge across discourse communities—such as governments, industry, media, community organizations and the public—at the cost of their success within academic discourse communities. To illustrate this paradox, the article places some focus on the “knowledge mobilization” priority for the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) of Canada. The article offers an intersection of discourse theory and game theory to consider how members of academic discourse communities can be understood as players in language games, positioned to make “moves” that change the game-rules, that in turn, permit changes to what are recognized as legitimate, academic discursive practices.

Sharing Authority: An Introduction

A commitment to sharing authority is a beginning, not a destination—and the beginning of a necessarily complex, demanding process of social and self discovery. There are no easy answers or formulas and no simple lessons. (Frisch 2003, 112) What follows is an exploration into the methodology, ethics, and politics of university-community collaboration in humanities and social science research in Canada. Much has changed since the days when academics were taught that their authority was derived from distance—the more the better. The drive to include communities more meaningfully in research and, when possible, to share interpretative power is gaining traction in many disciplines. 1 Community-based research has even been encouraged by funding agencies such as the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), which created the Community- University Research Alliances (CURA) program in 1999, 10 years ago this year. According to its current program description, SSHRC believes that by working together as equal partners in a research endeavour, postsecondary institutions and community organizations can jointly develop new knowledge and capabilities in key areas, sharpen research priorities, provide new research training opportunities, and enhance the abil- ity of social sciences and humanities research to meet the needs of Canadian communities in the midst of change. The Community-University Research Alliances program is designed to facilitate such collaborations. (SSHRC 2008)