Two Communication Department Professors are award recipients in the 2019-20 Insight Development Grants competition from SSHRC!

Professor Natalie Coulter

Professor Natalie Coulter received a grant for her project Evangelisms, Entanglements and Superfans: Young People's Creative Labour in the Visibility Economy.

The grant will explore how young people’s creative labour is being taken up by the marketing activities of the children’s media and entertainment industry, as children’s media and entertainment companies groom children to be product evangelizers and pint-sized marketers for their intellectual properties. Exploring how corporations exploit children’s creative labour contributes to a much needed discussion of children’s labour and work in the digital age and address the rights children have over their own creative labour.

Professor Robert Heynen

Professor Robert Heynen's project Biometrics and the Body: Tracing the Social Implications of the Science of Surveillance, will analyze the development of biometric technologies, in particular automated face recognition systems, focusing on how they encode particular conceptions of the body and, potentially, reinforce inequities and systems of discrimination.

Congratulations to both!