Twelve LA&PS researchers receive SSHRC funding

York U letters in Vari Hall

Researchers from York University’s Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies (LA&PS) have received a combined $687,686 in funding from the Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), through a Connection Grant and Insight Development Grants in 2023, to pursue research initiatives in the areas of knowledge mobilization, artificial intelligence, feminism, environmental humanities and more.

Connection Grants support events, workshops, and outreach activities that often lead to longer-term research projects and enable scholarly exchanges with academic and non-academic partners, and collaboration between the public, private and not-for-profit sectors.

This year, Adrian Shubert, a professor emeritus in the Department of History, received a Connection Grant of $25,446 to pursue phase two of his project “Spanish Civil War: A Virtual Museum – adding new galleries and content, extending the audience and developing resources for educators.”

Shubert’s outreach project’s overarching goal is to further extend knowledge exchange and dissemination about one of the most controversial and written-about events of the 20th century. The project will build on the core research team’s prior achievement of the permanent Spanish Civil War: A Virtual Museum, the construction of which was aided by SSHRC support. Since opening in September 2022, the virtual museum has been visited by 66,000 people from more than 130 countries.

“We greatly value the work of knowledge mobilization in our Faculty, and these successes not only advance our research agendas, they widen the audiences for our work and grow our reputation for research excellence,” said Ravi de Costa, associate dean of research and graduate studies, LA&PS.

In addition to Shubert, several York professors also received Insight Development Grants, which are awarded to emerging and established scholars in the social sciences and humanities to work on research projects of two to five years.

With 11 out of the 18 successful projects, LA&PS faculty saw a 61.1 per cent success rate for the 2023 Insight Development Grants. The initiatives supported by the program will help LA&PS researchers advance knowledge in critical areas of artificial intelligence, feminism, environmental humanities and many other fields.

“Support for research in its early stages is vital for scholars at all stages of their careers,” said David Cuff, director of strategic research and partnerships, LA&PS. “This funding will help our new colleagues establish themselves and give established colleagues scope to explore new avenues of discovery.”

The 11 faculty, and their projects, are:

Duygu Biricik Gulseren, School of Human Resources Management
Inconsistent Leadership: Scale Development and Measurement
$69,415

Ann Marie Murnaghan, Department of Humanities
Old poles and new stories: archival knowledges and oral histories of C’idimsggin’is and Kurt Seligmann
$70,521

Rianka Singh, Department of Communication & Media Studies
Platform Feminism
$53,363

Hannah Johnston, School of Human Resources Management
Regulating algorithmic management in standard employment: A comparison of legislative and industrial relations approaches
$71,209

Matthew Leisinger, Department of Philosophy
Cudworth’s conscious self
$36,492

Simone Bohn, Department of Politics
When Reproductive Self-Determination Remains Restricted. Women’s Strategies of Resistance in Brazil
$74,518

Ibtissem Knouzi, Department of Languages, Literatures & Linguistics
Critical Transitions in the Literacy Development of International Multilingual Students in English-medium Universities: A Longitudinal Mixed-Methods Study
$63,000

Zhixiang Liang, School of Administrative Studies 
The Impact of Institutional Systems on Foreign Direct Investment: A Multilevel Study of Chinese Multinational Enterprises
$63,393

Andrew Sarta, School of Administrative Studies
Imagining Augmentation Possibilities and How Organizations Adapt to the Emergence of Artificial Intelligence
$55,750

Jean-Thomas Tremblay, Department of Humanities
Eco-subtraction: downsizing the environmental humanities
$47,341

Yishu Zeng, Department of Economics
The Design of Information Disclosure Policy in Strategic Interaction
$57,238