Research Awards

Assistant Professor Michelle Miller has been awarded a SSHRC Insight grant for her project titled, “Triggering Education: Relational Readings of Trigger Warnings in the Canadian Post-Secondary Classroom”. Co-applicants on this grant are Hannah Dyer (Brock University) and Natalie Kouri-Towe (Concordia University). This study investigates faculty and student experiences of working through difficult material in Canadian classrooms, and the practices of using trigger or content warning. Using interdisciplinary scholarship in curriculum theory, literary theory, child studies, and queer and feminist studies, this study examines how faculty members and post-secondary students interpret requests for, and offerings of, trigger or content warnings in university classrooms across Canada. The research aims to address the pedagogical stakes of both student requests for warnings and faculty choices around whether and how to warn when courses contain difficult materials.  

Professor Lynne Milgram has been awarded a SSHRC Insight grant for her project “Thirsty for Alternative Sources of Agri-Beverages? New Commodity Provisioning from the Rural Philippines and Vietnam.” Sarah E. J. Turner (McGill University) is a co-applicant on this grant. The aim of this research is to investigate the actors and processes involved in the alternative commodity chains for two agri-beverages that promise sustainable and equitable outcomes: specialty Arabica coffee in the upland Philippines, and artisanal distilled alcohol in upland Vietnam. Drawing on expertise in economic anthropology, development geography, development economics, and Asian studies, and guided by a conceptual framework bringing together commodity chain literature, alternative food network approaches, and value creation debates, this four-year research program aims to produce nuanced understandings to support upland minority farmers, local and global entrepreneurial decision makers, and state institutions to work towards improved livelihood security and equity outcomes for marginalized groups. 

Associate Professor Maya Mahgoub-Desai, Environmental Design (Principal Investigator) and Associate Professor Nancy Snow, Graphic Design (Co-Investigator) along with Collaborators Antonella Nicaso (BIA Office, City of Toronto) and Dr. Ana Blanchard (Pediatric Infectious Diseases, Université de Montréal) have been awarded a Partnership Engage Grant for their project, “Planning for Post COVID-19 Futures of Public Space: Grounding Decision-Making in Community Perceptions and Insights.” The overall goal of this interdisciplinary and collaborative project is to capture community reflections on current pandemic responses, interventions, and insights for post-COVID-19 futures of public space design and communication within those spaces. This will allow significant community input in the BIAs decision-making process with respect to imminent public space projects and at the onset of new ones and contribute to the objectives of creating foundational knowledge to the current emerging discourse on the integration of Infection Prevention and Control (IPC) in public space design. Most importantly, it will bring diverse community participation, especially from high-risk groups, into the early planning stages to create relevant design and purposefully integrate the cultural and social practices of public life with infection control considerations in order to increase willing participation in and adherence to IPC protocols.  

Professor Peter Jones has been awarded a SSHRC Partnership Engage Grant in the COVID-19 track for the project, “Developing decision making in municipal planning to enable recovery, future adaptability and long-term resiliency.” This research is undertaken with the Flourishing Enterprise Institute and Wilfrid Laurier’s Viessmann Centre for Research and Engagement in Sustainability in partnership with the City of Kitchener and REFOCUS, and engages a growing group of planning innovators and social equity participants. The project encompasses an action learning study to develop an in-depth case study with the City of Kitchener to improve complex planning, participation and community outcomes. This PEG study addresses the need to transform municipal strategic planning for complex sustainability, enabling a just recovery from COVID-19, and to develop preparedness and resilience within Kitchener to effectively adapt to future risks. 

Professors Dot Tuer and Peter Morin are co-investigators and OCAD University an institutional partner on a seven-year 2.5 million SSHRC Partnership Grant, “Developing Transborder Research-Creation Practices,”awarded in June 2020. Led by Laura Levin of York University, the grant connects artists, activists, community organizers, and scholars from across Canada, Latin American, and New York City to engage in a range of research-creation practices that explore performance as a methodology, pedagogical strategy, tool for social change, and address hemispheric human rights issues related to migration, extractivism, Indigenous sovereignty, and gender and racialized violence. At the core of the grant’s organizational structure are three thematic research clusters, Oralities, Mobilities, and Ecologies, which will undertake collaborative research, commission artist works, sponsor field schools and other gatherings, and participate in archival and publication activities, with the goal of developing long-term intersectoral networks. OCAD University will play a key institutional role as a meeting site for research gatherings and artist residencies.

 

Department: 

Assistant Professor Michelle Miller has been awarded a SSHRC Insight grant for her project titled, “Triggering Education: Relational Readings of Trigger Warnings in the Canadian Post-Secondary Classroom”. Co-applicants on this grant are Hannah Dyer (Brock University) and Natalie Kouri-Towe (Concordia University). This study investigates faculty and student experiences of working through difficult material in Canadian classrooms, and the practices of using trigger or content warning. Using interdisciplinary scholarship in curriculum theory, literary theory, child studies, and queer and feminist studies, this study examines how faculty members and post-secondary students interpret requests for, and offerings of, trigger or content warnings in university classrooms across Canada. The research aims to address the pedagogical stakes of both student requests for warnings and faculty choices around whether and how to warn when courses contain difficult materials.  

Professor Lynne Milgram has been awarded a SSHRC Insight grant for her project “Thirsty for Alternative Sources of Agri-Beverages? New Commodity Provisioning from the Rural Philippines and Vietnam.” Sarah E. J. Turner (McGill University) is a co-applicant on this grant. The aim of this research is to investigate the actors and processes involved in the alternative commodity chains for two agri-beverages that promise sustainable and equitable outcomes: specialty Arabica coffee in the upland Philippines, and artisanal distilled alcohol in upland Vietnam. Drawing on expertise in economic anthropology, development geography, development economics, and Asian studies, and guided by a conceptual framework bringing together commodity chain literature, alternative food network approaches, and value creation debates, this four-year research program aims to produce nuanced understandings to support upland minority farmers, local and global entrepreneurial decision makers, and state institutions to work towards improved livelihood security and equity outcomes for marginalized groups. 

Associate Professor Maya Mahgoub-Desai, Environmental Design (Principal Investigator) and Associate Professor Nancy Snow, Graphic Design (Co-Investigator) along with Collaborators Antonella Nicaso (BIA Office, City of Toronto) and Dr. Ana Blanchard (Pediatric Infectious Diseases, Université de Montréal) have been awarded a Partnership Engage Grant for their project, “Planning for Post COVID-19 Futures of Public Space: Grounding Decision-Making in Community Perceptions and Insights.” The overall goal of this interdisciplinary and collaborative project is to capture community reflections on current pandemic responses, interventions, and insights for post-COVID-19 futures of public space design and communication within those spaces. This will allow significant community input in the BIAs decision-making process with respect to imminent public space projects and at the onset of new ones and contribute to the objectives of creating foundational knowledge to the current emerging discourse on the integration of Infection Prevention and Control (IPC) in public space design. Most importantly, it will bring diverse community participation, especially from high-risk groups, into the early planning stages to create relevant design and purposefully integrate the cultural and social practices of public life with infection control considerations in order to increase willing participation in and adherence to IPC protocols.  

Professor Peter Jones has been awarded a SSHRC Partnership Engage Grant in the COVID-19 track for the project, “Developing decision making in municipal planning to enable recovery, future adaptability and long-term resiliency.” This research is undertaken with the Flourishing Enterprise Institute and Wilfrid Laurier’s Viessmann Centre for Research and Engagement in Sustainability in partnership with the City of Kitchener and REFOCUS, and engages a growing group of planning innovators and social equity participants. The project encompasses an action learning study to develop an in-depth case study with the City of Kitchener to improve complex planning, participation and community outcomes. This PEG study addresses the need to transform municipal strategic planning for complex sustainability, enabling a just recovery from COVID-19, and to develop preparedness and resilience within Kitchener to effectively adapt to future risks. 

Professors Dot Tuer and Peter Morin are co-investigators and OCAD University an institutional partner on a seven-year 2.5 million SSHRC Partnership Grant, “Developing Transborder Research-Creation Practices,”awarded in June 2020. Led by Laura Levin of York University, the grant connects artists, activists, community organizers, and scholars from across Canada, Latin American, and New York City to engage in a range of research-creation practices that explore performance as a methodology, pedagogical strategy, tool for social change, and address hemispheric human rights issues related to migration, extractivism, Indigenous sovereignty, and gender and racialized violence. At the core of the grant’s organizational structure are three thematic research clusters, Oralities, Mobilities, and Ecologies, which will undertake collaborative research, commission artist works, sponsor field schools and other gatherings, and participate in archival and publication activities, with the goal of developing long-term intersectoral networks. OCAD University will play a key institutional role as a meeting site for research gatherings and artist residencies.

 

Department: