This year, LA&PS received $3.7 million in total awarded Tri-Agency Funding, research funding provided by three Canadian Government agencies: Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) and Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), for LA&PS researchers who are at the forefront of knowledge and have a direct impact on people’s lives.

In 2023-24, faculty members across LA&PS had a 61.5% success rate in new SSHRC Partnership proposals, receiving over $1 million for 18 SSHRC collaborative research and knowledge mobilization projects.

Faculty members across LA&PS received 11 Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Insight Development Grants this year, a program targeting early career scholars. With a success rate of 61.1% in 2023 compared to the 48.1% national average for Insight Development projects, Insight Grant funding totaled to $1.2 million. The funded LA&PS projects focus on community-based research topics ranging from international migration to sustainable development, social and environmental resilience, among others.

This year, we enhanced the Dean’s Award for Research Excellence (DARE) program. Almost 60 student projects were submitted to the DARE program, 58 nominations are under review, out of which 10 nominations are being considered under the special initiative for Black and Indigenous identified students. Nominated students will receive mentorship in research from professors across LA&PS, showcasing the diversity of our research across the entire Faculty.

The Research Office created a Black Scholars Research Fund, providing $50,000 per year to support emerging and mid-career Black scholars with funding to help them build their careers and share their work.

In 2023-24, LA&PS confirmed our commitment to hiring a Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Data Sovereignty, to make timely and much needed contributions to research, policy and practice relevant to how research is conducted with Indigenous Peoples, both in Canada and internationally. The Chair will anchor a research program valued at over $1 million, pending approval for a five-year term followed by renewal for a second five-year term by the Canada Research Chairs program.

This year, we received $500,000 in new funding for Dr. Gilberto Fernandes’s Portuguese Canadian History Project, an archives research project documenting the immigration, community life, and politics of the Portuguese Canadian community in the GTA over time through research, community engagement and oral histories.

This year, we continued to support our seven Canada Research Chairs, two Ontario Research Chairs and 12 York Research Chairs across LA&PS by facilitating research partnerships, research engagement, student straining and knowledge mobilization.

This year’s LA&PS Research to Impact Workshop Series delivered training on Confronting Online Hate and Harassment of Academic Researchers, where researchers, including graduate students, discussed their insights and efforts to respond to the phenomenon of the abuse directed at researchers, disproportionately targeting female, racialized, transgendered and other marginalized researchers across academic disciplines.

In 2023-24, LA&PS welcomed 3 new recipients of the LA&PS Postdoctoral Fellowship who are working with faculty members on compelling and engaging research projects: Kennedy Opande in the Department of Anthropology and Department of Social Science; Mai Ibrahim in the Department of Communication and Media Studies; and Juan Carlos Mezo- Gonzalez in the Centre for Feminist Research.

Dr. Christina Sharpe, Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Black Studies in the Humanities, was awarded the 2024-25 Guggenheim Fellowship for her trailblazing work in the field of Black studies. This year, her book Ordinary Notes received the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Non-Fiction and was shortlisted for the National Book Award. Sharpe was also awarded the Canada Council for the Arts Molson Prize for her contributions to the social sciences and humanities.

Professor Lynn Yu Ling Ng, Scholar in the Department of Politics, was a recipient of the 2023-24 Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship awarded by the Government of Canada, and given $70,000 per year for two years to support her research analyzing care work and the presence of distinct forms of structural inequality that influence migrant care workers and their capacity to care for elderly persons.

This year, Dr. Marsha Rampersaud, professor in the Department of Sociology, was honoured with the 2024 CBRCanada Emerging Community-Based Researcher Award for her extraordinary work with marginalized communities and dedication to community driven research, bringing about societal change in the criminal justice system.

Dr. Wenona Giles, professor emerita in the Department of Anthropology, was appointed to the Order of Canada for her significant contributions to refugee and migration studies, and for her efforts to increase access to higher education among those living in refugee camps.

This year, Dr. Sara Horowitz, a professor in both the Department of Humanities and Department of Languages, Literatures & Linguistics, was elected as Fellow to the Royal Society of Canada 2023. One of the country’s highest honours in the arts, social sciences and sciences, Horowitz was recognized for her research and as one of the world’s foremost experts in Jewish studies.

In 2023, Dr. Professor Joshua Fogel of the Department of History, was named a Royal Society of Canada Fellow, as a leading scholar in Asian studies with focuses on the cultural, political and economic interactions between China and Japan, the importance of Japan in China’s modern development and the changing attitudes both countries have towards one another from the 14th to 19th centuries.

From May 27 to June 2, 2023, York University hosted the 92nd annual Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences, the largest academic gathering in Canada, in partnership with the Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences. Over 8,000 graduate students, scholars and practitioners in the humanities and social sciences converged on campus to share their research through a series of diverse, engaging and difficult conversations that expand the vision of our university and the world. LA&PS participated in and led many programs around the conference’s theme of Reckonings & Re-Imaginings, supporting equity, diversity, inclusion, and decolonization (EDID).

At Congress 2023, LA&PS led a roundtable discussion “Building and Animating Archives to Give Voice to Communities,” composed of York scholars of ethnic/immigrant histories and communities in Canada, including Abril Liberatori, Gil Fernandes, Sakis Gekas, David Koffman, and Libraries head archivist Michael Moir. The panel was a collective reflection on the importance of reckoning with and re-imagining ethnic, community and diaspora history research, and what an intersectional and collaborative approach to this research might be.

During the 92nd annual Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences, LA&PS contributed to over 80 programs, including panels, events and roundtable discussions around Reckonings & Re-Imaginings, supporting equity, diversity, inclusion, and decolonization (EDID). We led lectures like “Body Slams that Matter: The Material Impact of Performativity on Selfhood in Professional Wrestling” by Tyler Gasteigerm (Humanities) and “Indigenous Laws and Jurisdiction for Addressing Harms: Re-Imagining Criminal Justice” by Carmela Murdocca (Sociology), and roundtable discussions including “Overcoming epidemics: Transnational Black communities’ response, recovery, and resilience” by Gertrude Mianda (Gender, Sexuality & Women’s Studies). We also produced the LA&PS Research Report: Research in Action, highlighting the innovative, impactful and diverse research contributions from our Faculty.

As part of the programming for Congress, LA&PS produced the Next Generation Lecture Series featuring professors Desirée de Jesus (Communication & Media Studies), Yvonne Su (Equity Studies), Cary Wu (Sociology) and Kinnon MacKinnon (Social Work) on a range of topics from how Black Canadian girls develop their sense of cultural and national belonging to how high inflation can be a critical determinant of health and health inequality.