SSHRC

Faculty of Law

Philosophy

Ontario Institute for Studies in Education

Subheadline

University Professor David Dyzenhaus was awarded a Gold Medal by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada

David Dyzenhaus’s scholarly interests were shaped during his legal studies at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, at a time when South Africa’s apartheid regime held total sway.

“I thought there must be more to law than what a government with a total grip on power enacted, as lawyers were able to find legal resources to resist oppression and discrimination despite the fact that there was no written constitution,” says Dyzenhaus, a University Professor at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Law and the Faculty of Arts & Science's department of philosophy.

“Lawyers… found legal resources despite all of this to resist what was being visited on the majority of South Africans by law. That made administrative law – a seemingly boring subject – very interesting.”

David Dyzenhaus (supplied image)

That feature of legal order led to a career-long fascination with the rule of law and administrative law, the substantive area of law he teaches.

Dyzenhaus’s exceptional contributions to his field were recognized with a Gold Medal from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). The medal is the council’s highest honour and is awarded to an individual whose leadership, dedication and originality of thought have inspired students and colleagues.

“David is a renowned scholar and teacher, celebrated by peers and students alike,” said University Professor Jutta Brunnée, dean of the Faculty of Law. “It signals a lifetime of academic achievement and extraordinary expertise to receive this very special prize from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.”

A fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and corresponding fellow of the British Academy, Dyzenhaus researches the idea of legality in philosophy of law and political thought, constitutionalism, and the modern legal state.

In the department of philosophy, he teaches an introductory course on the philosophy of law as well as undergraduate and graduate courses on political and legal philosophy. He also taught a first-year humanities seminar titled “Trump, the rule of law, and the rise of illiberal democracy”.

“Throughout his career, David has produced a body of work of unusual depth and importance.” said Professor Martin Pickavé, chair of the department of philosophy. “It is wonderful to see his rich research now recognized with one of the country’s most important national awards.”

For Dyzenhaus, who holds the Albert Abel Chair of Law, teaching and research go hand in hand. “I can't do research without talking to students about it, and I can't teach without it engaging directly with my interests,” he said.

He says questions in legal philosophy are often posed in an abstract way: What is law? What is legal order? But Dyzenhaus says many countries have “this thing simply known as ‘law’ and the issue for philosophy of law is to try to find an account of the nature of that thing.

“When it comes to the more difficult question – what is the rule of law – the simple answer is that one has the rule of law when the state acts in accordance with law,” he says. “So if the state enacts law, and then its officials abide by the law they implement, the real question becomes whether if, in so doing, officials do something that's morally worthwhile.”

This spring, Dyzenhaus will take his expertise to the London, U.K.-based Centre for Transnational Legal Studies – a joint venture between U of T’s Faculty of Law and 20 other premier law schools – where he will teach courses on the philosophy of judicial review and the politics of legal space. The latter course, which Dyzenhaus will co-teach with his former student Kirsten Rundle, a professor at Melbourne University’s law school, will examine the dilemmas human rights lawyers face and how these are shaped by the legal spaces in which they operate.

“Such lawyers know that when they're using legal resources to struggle against legalized oppression, they're not going to be able to overturn an oppressive regime and might actually help to legitimate it,” says Dyzenhaus.

His next research project will examine the social basis for law through the lens of social theory and sociology, and explore how individuals participate in society’s constitutional foundation.

"It’s not what people do in their daily lives, but what happens when they engage a lawyer, and through that lawyer, participate in the legal order,” Dyzenhaus said.

OISE's Kang Lee wins SSHRC Impact Award for research on childhood dishonesty

rahul.kalvapalle — Thu, 23 Nov 2023 16:52:47 +0000

OISE's Kang Lee wins SSHRC Impact Award for research on childhood dishonesty

rahul.kalvapalle Thu, 11/23/2023 - 11:52

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Kang Lee, a professor at OISE, is a world-renowned expert on childhood dishonesty (supplied image)

Perry King

Kang Lee

Temerty Faculty of Medicine

Subheadline

Lee was honoured for his research on child moral development – specifically, how children learn to tell lies

Kang Lee, a professor in the department of applied psychology and human development at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) at the University of Toronto, has received the 2023 Insight Award from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).

The award, which comes with a $50,000 prize, recognizes outstanding achievement arising from SSHRC-funded initiatives. Lee, a world-renowned expert on childhood dishonesty, was honoured for his research – spanning three decades – on child moral development: specifically, how children learn to tell lies.

Lee’s work is credited with transforming our understanding of the development of lying, whilst having far-reaching implications and impacts on real-world practices. For example, his work led to Canadian law reforms in 2005 concerning obtaining evidence from children. Since 2006, a legal procedure based on his research must be employed to admit children as witnesses in Canadian criminal courts.

“I am deeply grateful for SSHRC’s strong commitment to supporting social science research like that of mine,” said Lee, a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair. “Because of this commitment, our lab was able to make practical contributions far beyond those we could have ever foreseen.

“These include impacts on legal reforms concerning child witnesses in Canada, advancements in the diagnosis and treatment of children with conduct problems, and the invention of a new imaging technology to monitor and study people’s physical and mental health using smartphones.”

The imaging technology developed by Lee – transdermal optimal imaging – measures physiological changes to the human body, like heart rate and blood pressure, simply by looking at a person’s face. The technology led to cutting-edge applications like Anura, which uses smartphone selfie videos to assess physical and mental health wellness, and is powered by the DeepAffex cloud engine.

“Professor Lee’s research has made a broad impact across critical areas in education, and his exceptional scholarship, teaching, and mentoring of educational researchers are remarkable contributions to the field, to OISE, and to U of T,” said Professor Erica Walker, dean of OISE.

“He is highly deserving of this Insight Award, a prestigious honour for an outstanding professor. On behalf of the OISE community, I wholeheartedly congratulate Professor Lee for this significant recognition from SSHRC.”

Lee thanked the more than 10,000 children who participated in his studies on the development of deception, and have since grown into successful adults – professors, lawyers and thriving students. “Rest assured, their childhood tales have not led them astray,” he says.

U of T researchers receive grants for research projects that aim to transform lives

lanthierj — Tue, 29 Aug 2023 17:32:00 +0000

U of T researchers receive grants for research projects that aim to transform lives

lanthierj Tue, 08/29/2023 - 13:32

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(photo by Dimensions/Getty Images)

Jelena Damjanovic

Topic

Our Community

Dalla Lana School of Public Health

Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work

Faculty of Kinesiology & Physical Education

Faculty of Law

Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy

Subheadline

Projects supported by SSHRC focus on girls and youth in sport, trans and gender diverse survivors of violence, and fighting poverty, racism and climate change

Catherine Sabiston, a professor at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Kinesiology & Physical Education (KPE) knows sport has the power to transform lives and boost mental health.

“Community sport is the most prevalent organized activity for youth in Canada and offers a multitude of benefits for growth and development, higher life satisfaction, positive peer relationships and development of leadership skills,” says Sabiston, who holds a Canada Research Chair in physical activity and mental health.

“Unfortunately, there is a discrepancy in the sport participation rates, commitment and sustained involvement among youth that is predominantly determined by gender, race and Indigeneity, ability, social class and weight identity factors, limiting sport’s potential for positive impact – particularly for girls.”

Sabiston aims to change all that through a new project that seeks to build equitable, diverse and inclusive participation, access and quality experiences in youth sport – with a special focus on improving community sport participation, access and quality experiences in sport for girls.

Called the “Partnership for Equitable, Diverse and Inclusive Participation, Access, and Quality Experiences in Youth Sport: Sport4All,” the project involves partnerships with 66 national sport organization leaders, researchers and sport advisers, including parents, coaches, officials, youth, and international experts.

Sabiston is one of two researchers at U of T whose innovative research received support from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) through Partnership Grants announced today. The grants support formal partnerships between academic researchers and community partners, other academic institutions and businesses that will advance knowledge and understanding on critical issues of intellectual, social, economic and cultural significance.

Janice Du Mont and Catherine Sabiston (photo of Sabiston by Jing-Ling Kao-Beserve)

Janice Du Mont, a senior scientist at Women’s College Research Institute and a professor at U of T’s Dalla Lana School of Public Health, also received a Partnership Grant for her project, “The trans-LINK Canada Network: Partnering to create and exchange knowledge on supporting transgender and gender diverse survivors of sexual assault and intimate partner violence.”

“Trans and gender diverse persons face high rates of gender-based violence,” Du Mont says. “We are collaborating with diverse organizations across Canada to create a national network dedicated to working across sectors to generate the evidence, policies, protocols and curricula essential to better addressing the needs of trans and gender diverse survivors of sexual assault and intimate partner violence.”

Sabiston and Du Mont were each awarded the full amount of $2.5 million over 7 years for their projects.

“Professors Sabiston and Du Mont are addressing issues that are of critical importance to communities here in Canada and around the world through innovative and collaborative research projects,” says Professor Leah Cowen, U of T’s vice-president, research and innovation, and strategic initiatives. “The University of Toronto is grateful for the federal government support of their work, which has the potential to transform lives.”

Five researchers at U of T were also awarded Partnership Development Grants (see list below) and a further 46 projects at the university received funding through Insight Grants, which support research excellence in the social sciences and humanities. The federal government announced the funding alongside its release of the new and renewed Canada Research Chairs – which included 36 U of T faculty members.

For Sabiston, the Partnership Grant – the largest SSHRC grant in KPE’s history – will help accomplish four main goals that were co-developed and informed by the needs of partner organizations:

Document and describe how intersecting identities affect girls’ experiences of community sport.
Build a national sport data system to collect meaningful and timely data on community sport experiences and participation trends, and to identify predictors and outcomes of quality sport.
Develop, deliver, assess and standardize supportive resources for community sport leaders and girls to help foster participation, access and quality sport experiences.
Integrate and mobilize research outcomes to develop an open-access toolkit for organizations to collaborate on, engage in and contribute to the timely equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) issues in Canadian youth sport; and to secure a sustainable partnership model for researchers and community leaders.

The ultimate goal, Sabiston says, is to build a sustainable community youth sport institute.

“The Government of Canada recognizes that sport is transformative and plays an important role in building stronger and healthier communities across the country, especially in the aftermath of COVID-19,” she says. “This is the perfect time to innovate for sport access, participation and quality experiences for girls in Canada.

“Sport4All will change sport knowledge, innovate sport practices, evolve sport access, improve sport participation – and positively change sport experiences for girls in Canada.”

Here is the list of recipients of SSHRC Partnership Development Grants at U of T:

Anver Emon in the Faculty of Law for “Uncovering systemic Islamophobia in Canada”
Lin Fang in the Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work for “Asian Parents Participatory Action (APPA): A community-university partnership to curate an Asian-centred approach to talking about racism at home”
Fiona Miller in the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation at the Dalla School of Public Health for “Strengthening health-care's contribution to city-led climate action: Exploring the potential of partnerships”
Sophie Soklaridis in the department of psychiatry in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine for “The promotion process as an act of power: An institutional ethnography of faculties of medicine in Canada”
Daniyal Zuberi in the Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work for “Poverty reduction in the Peel Region: System mapping and community-engaged research”

Time to care about care: U of T project measures care work’s importance to the global economy

Christopher.Sorensen — Thu, 19 Aug 2021 14:13:16 +0000

Time to care about care: U of T project measures care work’s importance to the global economy

Christopher.Sorensen Thu, 08/19/2021 - 10:13

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(Photos from Getty Images)

Cynthia Macdonald

Topic

Breaking Research

Sociology

Care work is difficult, undervalued – and essential. Indeed, it has been described as “the work that makes all other work possible.”

Historically, female family members have been primarily responsible for looking after children, seniors and others with complex care needs. But today, in Canada and other wealthy countries, care work is increasingly provided by migrant workers from distant regions. It is still largely done by women, who remain poorly compensated.

Photo courtesy of Ito Peng.

In 2013, the University of Toronto’s Ito Peng began work on a landmark seven-year project designed to study how this new model of care influenced the global migration of care workers – and how, in turn, that migration affected family and gender relations, gender equality, government policy and global governance.

Peng is a professor in the department of sociology and at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy in the Faculty of Arts & Science. Her project, entitled Gender, Migration and the Work of Care, documented the stories of hundreds of female care workers, focusing mainly on those from the Asia-Pacific region. In studying working conditions, earnings and the day-to-day lives of this group, Peng’s research revealed deep inequalities between wealthy and poorer countries by showing how dependent upon one another they have become as a result of the new care model.

Now, Peng is heading up another massive project, for which she has just received funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), as well as the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the Open Society Foundation. Entitled “Care Economies in Context: Towards Sustainable Social and Economic Development,” the project will unite research teams from eight different countries, span five years and involve 17 different partner agencies.

The project is one of two U of T initiatives to each receive $2.5 million in funding from SSHRC through recently announced partnership grants. Steven Farber, an associate professor of human geography at U of T Scarborough, is leading a five-year, multimillion-dollar project on transport poverty that will study and address historical and current inequities in Canadian transportation systems – an initiative that will involve 33 academics from 15 universities as well as contributions from governments, professional associations, unions, industry partners and more.

“These projects demonstrate the importance of community-engaged research at U of T,” said Leah Cowen, U of T’s associate vice-president, research. “Working with such a wide range of partners is what will allow Ito Peng and Steven Farber to address complex and critical issues and develop sustainable and equitable solutions that include these communities.”

Peng’s project emanates from work done by economists at the American University in Washington, D.C.

“Their aim was to measure the size of the care economy, and use that data to develop macroeconomic models,” says Peng, who holds the Canada Research Chair in Global Policy and is also director of the Centre for Global Social Policy – a research, teaching and training centre within the department of sociology.

The Care Economies project is an example of interdisciplinary research in action: in order to develop their models, the economists required a sociologist’s input.

“They needed data that would give them information about demographic changes, population dynamics, the amount of time people spend on various paid and unpaid activities,” says Peng. “All these things economists can’t do. So they asked if I could help them, because my skill is in empirical data and analysis.”

It’s crucial to show policy-makers how important care work is to the economy, says Peng, since much of this work isn’t factored into a country’s gross domestic product (GDP).

“GDP only measures a kind of monetary transaction that happens in the market,” she says. “So work that’s unpaid or informal doesn’t get counted. But if we actually calculated the size of that contribution, we’d be looking at about 20 to 40 per cent of a country’s GDP. That’s a huge amount.”

The pandemic made Canadians realize how much we all depend on high-quality care. The crisis in long-term care homes resulted in the untimely deaths of many senior citizens. Parents struggled both to earn a living and care for children who were locked out of schools and daycares. And far away, migrant workers had to stay home – which, in turn, not only caused major problems for the workers themselves, but the economies of their home countries.

“Nations in the Global South use labour export as a form of social and economic development,” Peng says. “In the Philippines, for example, about 10 per cent of their GDP comes from overseas remittance. It’s all in foreign currency as well. In some countries it’s larger than foreign aid.”

Large projects like those Peng oversees underscore the significance of community-engaged research at U of T.

“As you can see, we can’t do this on our own; our research is driven by real-world issues and experience,” she says. “That’s why a lot of our basic questions and theoretical frameworks come from our community partners. They’re the ones who tell us what the really important questions are.

“And a project like this is multi-scalar, meaning we are connected not only to local but national and global organizations. So, the learning doesn’t just stay at the local level.”

With a rapidly aging population in North America, the need for care workers will become more urgent in coming years. Canadians remain concerned: a recent Angus Reid poll showed that a majority of respondents were open to a two per cent tax hike in order to improve long-term care. And childcare funding was of central importance in the most recent federal budget.

But more needs to happen, according to Peng, who believes that care work must be better paid, better regulated and perceived as more prestigious. At that point, she says more men may be willing to enter the profession.

“The reason this work is undervalued has to do with this pervasive social norm that it’s women’s work,” she says. “Because women have traditionally done care work for ‘free’ within the household it has been assigned little or no economic value. Of course, this is completely wrong. But that kind of normative shift takes time.

“It can only happen with gradual structural changes.”

Peng says those changes need to start happening now.

“My worry is that in a post-pandemic world, once things get closer to the new normal, people are going to forget what happened,” she says. “While the window is open, we have to make sure changes are made, policies are implemented and actions are taken. Because the longer we wait, the worse it will be.”

Anthropologist Tania Li honoured with SSHRC Insight Award

noreen.rasbach — Wed, 03 Oct 2018 04:00:00 +0000

Anthropologist Tania Li honoured with SSHRC Insight Award

noreen.rasbach Wed, 10/03/2018 - 00:00

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Tania Li, the first U of T researcher to receive the SSHRC Insight Award, is presented the award by Governor-General Julie Payette in Ottawa on Wednesday (photo by Sgt. Johanie Maheu, Rideau Hall)

Sean Bettam

Topic

Global Lens

Anthropology

Global

Humanities

Subheadline

Tania Li, an anthropologist whose research for the past two decades has been focused on Indigenous highland communities in Indonesia, has received the prestigious 2018 Insight Award from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).

Announced Wednesday among the council’s annual Impact Awards, the prize recognizes outstanding achievement arising from a SSHRC-supported research project that significantly contributes to knowledge and understanding about people, societies and the world.

Li, a University Professor in the department of anthropology at the Faculty of Arts & Science, is the first U of T researcher to receive the Insight Award.

“I am honoured to be chosen for this award and am grateful for this recognition of my efforts to translate my work into advocacy and policy,” says Li. “This award will enable me to do more of that.”

Two other U of T researchers were finalists for other Impact Awards. Jack Quarter, a professor at U of T's Ontario Institute for Studies In Education, was a finalist for the SSHRC Partnership Award for his work on Canada’s social economy and bridging the gap between universities and other communities. Kinnon MacKinnon, a PhD candidate at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, was a finalist for the Talent Award for his research on the barriers to mental health care services experienced by transgender, transsexual and transitioned persons.

“The University of Toronto is extremely proud of these three researchers for their strong showing in this prestigious competition,” said Vivek Goel, U of T's vice-president of research and innovation. “Their work is rooted in partnerships with communities and has made significant contributions to their fields of study and the lives of those they are working with in their research.”

Goel added that the SSHRC Impact Awards recognize the highest achievements in social sciences and humanities research, knowledge mobilization and scholarship supported by SSHRC. “Our strong showing in this prestigious national competition highlights the excellent social science and humanities research led by U of T faculty and graduate students,” he said.

Tania Li is a University Professor in the department of anthropology at the Faculty of Arts & Science (photo by Diana Tyzsko)

As for Li, she received SSHRC support for her “Poverty and Wealth in Indonesia’s New Rural Economies” project from 2009 to 2012. She and her research team closely examined the nature and outcomes of rural land transformation on the Indonesian islands of Sulawesi and Kalimantan, where human and industry interactions with the environment have changed landscapes and livelihoods in fundamental ways. Sulawesi was hit hard by Friday’s devastating earthquake and tsunami in Indonesia.

Li continues to visit her two research sites for periods of two to 12 weeks most years, to track ongoing changes in real time. Her findings challenge the idea that high market value agriculture brings uniform development benefits for residents. Through her work, she demonstrates how the prevalent development model is failing to address endemic poverty.

A longtime associate of the Asian Institute at U of T, Li has led investigations of the dynamic changes resulting from attempts to spur economic growth, either by shifting from subsistence farming to high-growth export crops or the establishment of plantations by foreign or domestic corporations. Her work shows that high growth does indeed create wealth, but it creates new forms of poverty as well.

In her study sites, people who were not previously poor became so when they lost access to land and wage work was scarce or poorly paid. Highlighting these uneven results has resonance in many parts of the world where a period of high growth has been accompanied by rising inequality, sluggish job creation, lagging wages, and new forms of impoverishment.

Tania Li's 2018 Insight Award from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (photo by Sgt. Johanie Maheu, Rideau Hall)

As very few scholars have had the opportunity to study the plantation world up close, policy-makers and advocacy organizations in several continents have begun to engage with Li’s findings. She has spoken before the European Parliament, the World Bank in Jakarta and Washington, and the former Canadian International Development Agency, and has conducted training sessions with multiple NGOs and policy-makers. Her work has also been taken up in China, where a half a billion rural inhabitants could be unevenly impacted by the government’s current growth-oriented rural development model.

“Our approach has been to identify the mechanisms that produce new poverty and explain precisely how this takes place,” says Li. “There are a number of things that could be done differently with regards to economic development to ensure that that prosperity is more evenly distributed. It is our job as researchers and scholars to provide the evidence that governments and other agencies can use when developing policies that promote development.

“Incisive research can also support advocates for human rights, labour rights, Indigenous rights and the people working on the frontlines of mobilization,” she says. “Many people benefit from the status quo so it will not change without effective pressure.”

Bolstering Canadian research: U of T welcomes federal science review

ullahnor — Mon, 10 Apr 2017 19:58:21 +0000

Bolstering Canadian research: U of T welcomes federal science review

ullahnor Mon, 04/10/2017 - 15:58

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Barbara Sherwood Lollar, a professor of earth sciences, won the prestigious NSERC award in 2016 for research into billion-year-old water. NSERC is one of the federal research agencies discussed in the Fundamental Science Review (photo courtesy of NSERC)

Noreen Ahmed-Ullah

Author legacy

Noreen Ahmed-Ullah

Topic

Breaking Research

Canada Research Chairs

The University of Toronto welcomed the release on April 10 of the long-anticipated review of the federal government’s support for fundamental science.

Chaired by U of T President Emeritus Dr. David Naylor, the Fundamental Science Review panel, which also included former U of T president Robert Birgeneau, was asked last year to look for overall program gaps in Canada’s research funding ecosystem. The panel explored a breadth of disciplines including the social sciences and humanities.

The panel’s report offered 35 recommendations on issues of governance and enhanced support for early-career researchers, as well as calling for a boost of $1.3 billion in federal funding. It’s been four decades since a comprehensive review of this scale has occurred at the federal level.

“We welcome the dedicated work of the panel,” said Vivek Goel, U of T’s vice-president of research and innovation. “The panel identified the significance of the full range of scholarship – a broad definition of research beyond just fundamental science – and they’ve proposed a way of better coordinating the funding ecosystem.”

The panel’s key recommendations include:

The formation of a formal coordinating board for the four federal research agencies − Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI), Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) and Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) − chaired by the Chief Science Advisor.
The creation of a new National Advisory Council on Research and Innovation (NACRI) to provide broad oversight of the federal research and innovation ecosystems.
The government of Canada should provide CFI with a stable annual budget.
The government of Canada should mandate and fund CFI to increase its share of the matching ratio for national-scale major research facilities from 40 to 60 per cent.
The government should renew the Canada Research Chairs program, including restoring funding to 2012 levels and adjusting it to account for inflation since 2000.
The government should gradually increase funding to the Research Support Fund until the reimbursement rate is 40 per cent for all institutions.

Andrew Thomson, chief of government relations at U of T, said the review was timely.

“We believe it will provide a basis for improved coordination across the granting councils for all research endeavours,” Thomson said. “This is about strengthening the Canadian research ecosystem, which drives the economic, social and cultural growth of the country.”

Read the Globe and Mail story

The review was done by a panel of experts chaired by Dr. Naylor. It warned that years of dwindling research- and development- investment in Canada have left the country’s federal research ecosystem “weakly coordinated and inconsistently evaluated” and lacking “consistent oversight.”

Read the Maclean's story

U of T’s submission to the panel was one of 1,275 written submissions the panel reviewed from associations, organizations and individuals. The review also convened roundtables in five Canadian cities, talking to 230 researchers.

Read the CBC story

Goel said U of T was pleased to see the call for a public conversation about the value of investments in discovery-based research, as well as recommendations on improving communication and coordination among all of the major funding bodies.

“The panel has chosen an approach of creating a coordinating body and oversight group, this National Advisory Council on Research and Innovation (NACRI), that’s a very efficient way of dealing with this very complex issue,” he said.

Read the Toronto Star story

The university hopes to take a closer look at the implications of the recommendations, including calls for increased investment in the direct costs for research and the indirect costs, which are covered by the Research Support Fund.

“We are particularly pleased that the report also recommends greater investment in the Research Support Fund to better align the level of funding with the full costs of research borne by the university,” Thomson said. “This multi-year roadmap helps support top talent at U of T and our next generation of researchers.”

Minister of Science Kirsty Duncan launched the panel in June 2016. In a statement, Duncan said the government will be taking a close look at the panel’s recommendations.

“I look forward to reviewing the panel's recommendations and will continue listening to and engaging in an open and thoughtful way with Canada's research community as we collectively work toward the goal of ensuring that federal support for fundamental research is strategic and effective, and meets the needs of all Canadians,” she said.

Three minutes or 300 words: six U of T researchers are finalists for SSHRC contest

ullahnor — Fri, 07 Apr 2017 17:05:50 +0000

Three minutes or 300 words: six U of T researchers are finalists for SSHRC contest

ullahnor Fri, 04/07/2017 - 13:05

Cutline

Tammara Soma, a PhD student who researches food waste, is one of 25 finalists in the SSHRC storytelling contest. She believes academics must find different means of disseminating research to the public (photo by Diana Tyszko)

Topic

Global Lens

OISE

Six young researchers from the University of Toronto will go toe-to-toe against colleagues from 14 universities across Canada in the annual SSHRC Storytellers Contest this spring.

The six are among 25 finalists in the annual contest that challenges post-secondary students to tell a story – in three minutes or 300 words – on how SSHRC-funded research is making a difference in the lives of Canadians.

Their entries cover a range of subjects from harnessing game design to promote learning, to looking at how self-compassion can protect against negative emotions in sport. The range reflects U of T's strength across a broad set of research subjects.

The U of T contestants are:

Marie-Emilie (Mimi) Masson, a PhD student at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education
Tammara Soma, an Arts & Science PhD student in the department of geography & planning
Ali Sharifkhani, a PhD student at the Rotman School of Management
Jennifer (Jenna) Gilchrist, a PhD student in the Faculty of Kinesiology & Physical Education
Andrea Gauthier, a PhD student in the Institute of Medical Sciences in the Faculty of Medicine
Denise DuBois, a PhD student in the department of rehabilitation sciences institute in the Faculty of Medicine

“Our finalists have done a masterful job, through the stories they’ve told, of enlightening and informing us on key issues, and have demonstrated communication skills that will serve them throughout their careers,” said Ted Hewitt, president of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).

The finalists were selected from among nearly 200 entries by 24 expert judges from Canada and abroad.

“We’re pleased to see some of our youngest emerging scholars being recognized for their research as part of this innovative competition. We applaud SSHRC for encouraging them to find new ways and new audiences to explain and engage in their important work,” said Vivek Goel, U of T’s vice-president of research and innovation.

Soma is excited to take part in the competition because she believes academics who want to have an impact on policy must find a means of disseminating their research to legislators and the general public.

“Statistics show that 82 per cent of peer review articles aren’t even cited once, so we need to find diverse methods to communicate our research,” Soma said. “That’s why this competition is important. It’s really, really important for the academic community to learn to use visual media, social media and other means if they really want to make a difference.”

Check out other videos from the finalists

Yoga, Jane Eyre and self-actualization: U of T grad students use storytelling to explain their research

lavende4 — Tue, 26 Apr 2016 19:08:10 +0000

Yoga, Jane Eyre and self-actualization: U of T grad students use storytelling to explain their research lavende4 Tue, 04/26/2016 - 15:08

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Does early morning yoga change the way you think? U of T grad student Nicholas Hobson thinks so (photo by VCG/Getty Images)

Rory McKeown

Author legacy

Rory McKeown

Topic

Our Community

Current Students

Graduate Students