Principal Investigator: Andil Gosine.

Funding: SSHRC Connections Grant.

Term: 2020-2022.

"Everything Slackens In A Wreck" is a line from Khal Torabully's "Coolitude" which expresses Indentures' experience of rebuilding and reinventing their lives during the period of indentureship. Trapped in the dehumanizing conditions of the Indentureship program, migrants nevertheless also simultaneously worked against tenets of caste and gender that had been punishing to them in South Asia. Indo-Caribbean women, for example, found ways to assert new forms of economic, political and sexual autonomy that would endure to the present. Possibilities always open up in the fissures created by crisis, and the framework of this exhibition bears broader relevance, as evidenced in 2020 by the myriad responses to the pandemic and the stunning force of the Black Lives Matter movement; however bad things get, the human spirit and our survivalist drive force new shifts and invent new paths. Torabully's phrase is understood in this project as an observation more than aspiration---an acceptance of Michel Foucault's contention that resistance is an always present counterpart to power. This project records and weighs the mechanics of what slackens in a wreck---and optimistically imagines what comes after. This new project will include an exhibition at the Ford Foundation Gallery in New York in 2021

Principal Investigator: Mark Winfield

Funding: SSHRC Connections Grant.

Term: 2020-2022.

The project provides opportunities and platforms for researchers and practitioners to make connections between findings arising through different research projects and aids in setting future research agendas, including the impact of COVID-19 on low-carbon energy transitions. The subjects addressed through these projects have included energy efficiency, smart grids, energy storage, community energy planning and distributed energy resources, transportation and climate change, and inter-provincial cooperation on climate and energy policy. The project takes place at a critical point for Canada, where low-carbon energy transitions are already under stress from recently elected populist provincial governments. The COVID-19 pandemic has reinforced some of those pressures in significant ways.

Principal Investigator: Luisa Sotomayor. Partner: City of Toronto.

Funding: SSHRC Partnership Engage Grant.

Term: 2020-2022.

The main goal of this Partnership Engage Grant (PEG) project is to build a strong research collaboration between managers and policy officers at the City of Toronto's Shelter Support and Housing Administration (SSHA) division and faculty and researchers at York University to develop evidence-based approaches to public engagement and community dialogue about homelessness. More specifically, the project seeks to: examine the SSHA's current methods and tools of public engagement for the introduction of a new shelter; identify and compare effective practices from relevant national and international cases, and; develop a report with recommendations and a toolkit for practitioners aimed to improve future practices and inform decision-making at SSHA and across the City of Toronto divisions involved in the delivery of homeless housing and services.

Principal Investigator: Peter Vandergeest/Co-Investigator: Philip Kelly.

Funding: SSHRC Insight Grant.

Term: 2019-2024.

The research sets out to examine marine fisheries work, focusing on fisheries based out of Thailand and Taiwan that have been identified as having large numbers of migrant workers and instances of labour abuse. In particular, it aims to understand labour issues as experienced by workers and worker support organizations. These experiences are placed in the context of both the global seafood supply chains (or production networks) and the 'reproduction networks' that link migrant workers with their families and communities in source areas. The research is linked to another project titled "Sweatships at Sea:  Labour reform in the Thai seafood supply chain via hybrid global governance" led by Alin Kadfak at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. 

Principal Investigator: Gail Fraser.

Funding: SSHRC Insight Grant.

Term: 2020-2026.

The project focuses on the regulatory processes leading to decisions to permit exploratory offshore drilling in or adjacent to marine protected areas. It aims to assess decision-making processes by drawing on comparative international cases that highlight how eastern Canadian offshore oil governance practices can be strengthened to permit more robust public engagement in the development process and curtail subsequent political conflict. The project will use a qualitative, multi-case study approach that compares and contrasts regulatory decisions where call for bids overlapped with a marine protected area in four comparable jurisdictions: Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, and New Zealand.

Principal Investigator: Sarah Rotz.

Funding: SSHRC Insight Development Grant.

Term: 2019-2023.

The purpose of this RAIR Collective research project is to support grassroots Indigenous rematriation and (re)connection to land. It supports the convergence of food sovereign peoples in ways that advance dialogue and action for Indigenous land rematriation. This work centres Indigenous women and two-spirit presence, experiences and relationships to land and traditional territories. In turn, the work is grounded in emergent feminist, decolonial, and activist methodologies.

Co-Principal Investigators: Sheila Colla and Lisa Myers.

Funding: SSHRC New Frontiers in Research Fund.

Term: 2020-2023.

Dubbed as Finding Flowers, this interdisciplinary research project integrates art, ecology and education. Inspired by the work of the late Mi’kmaq artist Mike MacDonald, Finding Flowers grows, revitalizes and cares for native pollinator gardens as art installations, and as spaces for community contemplation and knowledge co-production. Working alongside pre-existing gardens created by MacDonald during 1995 and 2003, Finding Flowers is focused in preserving, expanding and building new Indigenous Pollinator Gardens at various locations across Canada. The project partners with local organizations such as BUSH Gallery (BC), Dalhousie University (NS), Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery (ON), Maloca Garden York University (ON), Mount St Vincent University (NS), Musagetes (ON), Ociciwan (AB), SKETCH Working Arts (ON), Walter Phillips Gallery (AB), Woodland Cultural Centre (ON).

Website: https://findingflowers.ca/

Co-Principal Investigators: Martin Bunch and Peter Victor.

Funding: SSHRC Insight Development Grant/SSHRC Partnership Grant.

Term: 2020-.

The Ecological Footprint Initiative is a partnership between the Global Footprint Network and York researchers who are working to enhance the accounting methodology and improve data on which the concept of ecological footprint is based. The goal is for York to become the global data center for the National Ecological Footprint Accounts, starting in 2019, and to lead an international network focused on making ecological footprint more accepted, accessible, and policy relevant. The research makes significant contribution to the development and implementation of resource allocation, protection, and measurement policies in Canada and around the world.  Given the success of the Ecological Footprint narrative on an international scale, the research will reach a broad and diverse audience that will provide new ways to improve individual behaviour towards achieving environmental sustainability.

Website: https://footprint.info.yorku.ca/ 

Principal Investigator: Jennifer Foster/Co-Investigator: Gail Fraser.

Funding: SSHRC Partnership Engage Grant.

Term: 2020-2025.

The project unites established researchers from York University with conservation managers from the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority (TRCA) and students to address pressing issues on Toronto's Leslie Street Spit, one of Canada's most celebrated "urban wilderness" landscapes. It combines innovative methodologies to develop an advanced understanding of human relationships with the Leslie Street Spit and to identify strategies for channeling ecologically and socially sustainable options for the future. It will explore park users' activities, preferences and ideals, with a view to creating policies, plans and designs for the Spit that help protect its ecological attributes.

Website: https://www.rubbletorefuge.com/ 

Principal Investigator: Kean Birch.

Funding: SSHRC Insight Grant.

Term: 2018-2023.

This project examines the extent, manifestation, and policy implications of ‘rentiership’ in contemporary, technoscientific capitalism. Rentiership is defined as the capture of value from the ownership and/or control of assets, rather than the production of new goods and services. It involves fieldwork on the following sectors in different countries: social media (San Francisco, USA); biotech (South East England, UK); and artificial intelligence (Toronto, Canada).