Researchers, graduate students and post-doctoral fellows at York University have been awarded over $10 million from the Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). The grants, part of $202.2 million in funding and awards announced on Aug. 28, will support York research that improves the quality of life of Canadians while addressing important socio-cultural and economic issues.
“SSHRC’s investment in humanities and social sciences research allows our scholars to contribute 
substantially to Canada’s knowledge base, to our culture and to our quality of life,” said Stan Shapson (right), York vice-president research & innovation. “This research helps us to better understand the world around us and the most pressing societal issues of our time.”
Forty-three York faculty research projects received $3.37 million through SSHRC’s Standard Research Grants program, an increase of 24 per cent in funding over 2007 results.
Their projects cover a range of disciplines and include research into:
- the role race and gender play in illness, injury and violence in nursing workplaces;
- developing Internet ethnography for marketing research;
- gender and digital gameplay;
- the causes and goal-regulation mechanisms of religious extremism;
- how humanitarian non-government organizations visually represent distant suffering;
- ecological restoration and the aggregate product cycle in Toronto.
The competition also included special calls for proposals in management, business and finance, through which six York researchers secured a total of $822,247. In addition, three York professors were awarded $104,830 in research development initiatives.
Graduate students and doctoral fellows also benefited from the announcements: 139 York master’s and doctoral students have won $5.87 million in scholarships and fellowships. In all, 2,405 graduate and post-doctoral projects across Canada received a total of $97.9 million.
“These awards also build upon our earlier success this year in SSHRC’s Strategic Knowledge Cluster competition, through which we secured $4.2 million to build the Canadian Refugee Research Network, led by Professor Susan McGrath, and the Canadian Homelessness Research Network, led by Professor Stephen Gaetz,” said Shapson. “The awards reinforce our leadership position in social innovation.”
“Our government is committed to fostering world-class Canadian research and increasing the supply of highly qualified and globally connected graduates that businesses need to succeed in today’s economy,” said James Moore, secretary of state. “We can have all the robust technologies in the world, but we need the social sciences and humanities to know how to harness them and interpret them from a human perspective, so that they translate into tangible, everyday benefits for society.”
A complete list of projects is available on the SSHRC Web site.