Project Investigators: Joshua Thienpont and Adeyemi Olusola

Funding: Canada Foundation for Innovation

Term: 2024-2026

The project focuses on developing an understanding of several modes of landscape disturbance (permafrost thaw, sediment erosion changes, flood/drought impacts) that occur naturally in the environment but are altered by ongoing anthropogenic climate
change. The project utilizes innovative techniques in mapping, monitoring, and predicting environmental geohazards using in situ data, laboratory analyses, remote sensing/GIS techniques, and machine learning algorithms. The ability to integrate these modes of inquiry
provides a holistic view of environmental change due to landscape disturbance not afforded by focusing on only one data source. The research works to elucidate the impact of environmental legacies/memory, climate and land use/landcover change on landscapes in
transition, and directly enables the establishment of environmental information systems that play an invaluable role in developing proactive measures against geohazards. The approaches and outcomes of this study's methodologies and outcomes can be extended to other landscapes in transition in Canada and beyond, which will go a long way in supporting stakeholder/ rightsholder decisions around climate change impacts and adaptation.

Project Investigator: Lina Brand Correa

Funding: Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council

Term: 2025-2027

The project will develop the evidence base on energy inequalities in Canada, where relatively little is known on this issue. It will tackle the difficult question of minimum and maximum energy use thresholds. There is existing work around minimum energy and material requirements for wellbeing, but maximum thresholds will be a novel contribution. Project findings will be shared through three peer-reviewed journal articles, a policy brief, and a symposium designed for stakeholders (academics, decision-makers, advocacy organizations). The social outcomes of the project will include the promotion of wider awareness concerning both energy deficiencies and energy excess. This will be achieved through direct engagement with decision-makers and policy makers. Such a perspective is expected to lead to improvements in wellbeing for significant portions of the population via new energy policy initiatives. The project will also cement research collaborations between the researcher and colleagues at Efficiency Canada and LIEN (Low Income Energy Network), setting the scene for more research in the area in the future.

Project Investigator: Mahtot Gebresselassie

Funding: Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council

Term: 2025-2027

The project proposes to investigate disability access and inclusion in ride-hailing services in Toronto and Mississauga with a view to expanding inclusive transportation systems and improving disabled individuals’ access to work, education, and other life opportunities. The central question that drives the work is: what characterizes the experience of wheelchair users with ride-hailing services and how do other socio-economic and demographic factors compound their challenges? The project leverages on the PI’s experience gained from leading a nationwide study in the US about wheelchair users of Uber and Lyft services to a) to establish a baseline understanding of the Canadian context and situate the work and b) explore additional avenues of inquiry into how other identities of riders may intersect with wheelchair use to exacerbate impediments with ride-hailing services. The research work aligns with the Shifting Dynamics of Privilege and Marginalization Pillar of SSHRC’s 2022-25 Action Plan.

Project Investigator: Muna-Udbi Ali

Funding: Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council

Term: 2025-2027

This two-year SSHRC Insight Development project with University of Western Ontario and Toronto Metropolitan University investigates Black cluster hiring initiatives to examine whether they represent meaningful steps to challenge anti-Black racism in Canadian universities. It aims to contribute to the existing literature on systemic anti-Black racism in higher education and offers a conceptual and analytic framework for scholars working at the intersection of policy, labour, and Black studies. The study challenges Canadian universities to do more than increase the complement of Black faculty within their institutions but also to create a working environment in which all Black faculty can thrive. A study of Canadian Black cluster hiring initiatives is timely not only because of shared institutional interests in EDI, but also because they may offer a model for what future cluster hiring might look like for other equity-deserving groups in universities and other public institutions.

Project Investigator: Alison Bain

Funding: Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council

Term: 2025-2029

This four-year research program advances knowledge on the role of Queer Cultural Infrastructure (QCI) in municipal social inclusion agendas by comparing the governance regimes of cities inside and outside the international LGBTQ+ urban policy Rainbow Cities Network (RCN members designated with this acronym). It challenges scholars, urban practitioners, and the public to imagine how QCI can augment LGBTQ+ recognition, wellbeing, and belonging in cities. It also explores the many modalities of inclusion-enhancing QCI through a set of global urban case studies.

Co-Project Investigators: Peter Victor with Brynhildur Davidsdottir (University of Iceland), Tarmo Remmel, Eric Miller, Katie Kish and the Global Footprint Network

Funding: SSHRC Partnership Grant

Term: 2022-2028

This SSHRC Partnership Grant draws on the strengths of York university, the University of Iceland, the British Columbia Institute of Technology, and the Global Footprint Network, creating a concentration of novel research applications and teaching expertise now unavailable. Having employed explicit equity, diversity, and inclusion tactics for building this partnership, the collaborative constitutes a diverse group of people from Indigenous communities, the United States, the UK, Austria, Spain, Switzerland, France, Mexico, Chile, Egypt, and Sri Lanka. The partnership's overarching goal is to teach, apply, decolonise, and improve upon the measurement of Ecological Footprint and Biocapacity through four main objectives: 1) Train an interdisciplinary generation of sustainability students; 2) Forge a vibrant international EFB research network; 3) Generate novel sustainability solutions; and 4) Transform global sustainability practices: We will disseminate findings and solutions through a comprehensive knowledge mobilization plan which focuses on innovative approaches for taking research to action.

Website: https://www.footprintpartnership.net/

Co-Principal Investigators: Dayna Nadine Scott and Heidi Kiiwetinepinesiik Stark

Funding: SSHRC Partnership Grant

Term: 2021-2027

Resource conflicts and legal uncertainties have dominated the political landscape over the last decade; conflicts over extraction and its infrastructures have intensified, catalyzing a fierce Indigenous resurgence. As the research team conceived this project, hereditary leaders were blocking a pipeline company from accessing their lands, inspiring solidarity actions that blocked rail lines, ports, highways, and political offices. The situation dramatically demonstrated that when corporate interests thrust contested projects onto Indigenous homelands - even with governmental approvals – they must contend with Indigenous governing authority. The project asks: How can the “just transition” to sustainable economies be imagined and infrastructured to foreground Indigenous governance systems? This project offers an agenda for fundamentally re-making our socio-technical systems; for both conceptualizing and building infrastructure otherwise.

Project website: https://jurisdiction-infrastructure.com/

Project Investigator: Jennifer Hyndman; Co-applicant: Bronwyn Bragg

Funding: SSHRC Insight Grant

Term: 2024-2029

“It’s for good reason that most new immigrants to Canada find themselves in a major metropolis—a Toronto or a Montreal or a Vancouver or (if you must) an Edmonton. The idea is, when you have more people that look like you, it’s easier to recognize how a place can become home” (Elamin Abdelmahmoud, 2022, p. 6). Across Canada, smaller centres are increasingly home to resettled refugees, as the number of destination cities hosting dedicated, federally funded resettlement assistance programs (RAPs) for government-assisted refugees (GARs) has grown from 23 to 42 cities across Canada over the past eight years; nine of these sites are new since 2021 (IRCC, 2022). The research focuses on smaller centres (under 100K) in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia and centre the perspectives of newcomer youth (ages 18-24) and parents of children who arrive in Canada as resettled refugees (now permanent residents).  The research team is a collaboration that includes Prof. Bronwyn Bragg at the University of Lethbridge as a co-applicant and Dr. Kathy Sherrell, a geographer and Chief of Settlement at the Immigrant Services Society of British Columbia in Vancouver and others.

Principal Investigator: Joshua Thienpont

Funding: NSERC Discovery Grant

Term: 2024-2029.

The research assesses the influence of lakes on thaw slump activity and re-activation, contributing to a better understanding the reciprocal relationship between permafrost thaw and surface waters. To address these research priorities, the project uses geomatics, assessment of lake and catchment physical characteristics using bathymetric and LiDAR sensors, and lake sediment cores to infer past physical, chemical, and biological conditions in lake ecosystems over millennial timescales. The project trains graduate and undergraduate student researchers in understanding the ecosystem impacts of landscape disturbance in rapidly changing, northern regions of Canada. The research is expected to contribute to an understanding of the relationship between thermokarst and lakes across the Northwest Territories being carried out by the faculty and student researchers and project collaborators.

Principal Investigator: Jennifer Korosi

Funding: NSERC Discovery Grant

Term: 2024-2029

The research advances new conceptual models for predicting ecosystem change in small lakes of rapidly thawing discontinuous permafrost peatlands, which comprise 18% of northern lake areas. Collaborations with the Dehcho First Nations and scientists at the Government of the Northwest Territories and other academic institutions provide a mechanism to connect the research with broader efforts to understand and adapt to permafrost thaw in the Dehcho. The research trains graduate and undergraduate students who understand and can communicate the nature, drivers, and consequences of environmental change, have the skills to work collaboratively to sustainably manage freshwater resources, and the cultural awareness to contribute to reconciliation in freshwater governance in Canada.

Website: lprg.ca