These awards recognize Liberal Arts & Professional Studies faculty members’ excellent research and the impact that work has on academic and social communities, as well as their commitment to engaging York University students.
Award categories include Distinction in Research Creativity or Scholarship and Distinction in Social Justice Research.
The Process
Deadline
May 1 of the award year.
When the deadline date falls on a Saturday, Sunday, or statutory holiday applications will be accepted on the next working day.
Submissions
Completed original nomination packages must be submitted to the secretary of the Awards and Celebrations Sub-Committee at lapsfc@yorku.ca.
Review
All awards are adjudicated by the Awards and Celebrations Sub-Committee of the Committee on Research Policy and Planning.
Please note: Incomplete applications will not be reviewed.
Terms of Reference
More information on both awards, including process for completing nomination packages, is available in the Terms of Reference (PDF).
2025-26 Research Awards
Congratulations to the winners and honourable mentions of the 2025-26 Research Awards!
Distinction in Social Justice Research (Winner)
Andrea Emberly
Department of Humanities
Associate Professor
Dr. Andrea Emberly is a Research Chair in Children’s Musical Cultures, and Associate Professor in the Children, Childhood & Youth program at York University. Her research focuses on children’s musical cultures and the relationship between childhood, wellbeing, and musical arts practices. Central to her work is exploring how children and young people access, innovate, and mobilize musical and creative arts practices within their communities and across diverse social and cultural contexts. She is currently leading several community-engaged collaborations with refugee and newcomer children and young people, community organizations, and refugee settlement agencies across the Greater Toronto Area and internationally. These projects examine how children and young people use music and the arts to respond to experiences of migration and displacement, challenge the silencing of children’s voices, and strengthen belonging, connection, and wellbeing. Her research is grounded in community-led and participatory approaches to knowledge mobilization, with a commitment to transforming how research with children and young people can function as a tool for social change.
Emerging Researcher
Eric Kennedy
School of Administrative Studies
Associate Professor
Dr. Eric Kennedy is an Associate Professor of Disaster and Emergency Management at York University. Kennedy serves as Editor-in-Chief of the Canadian Journal of Emergency Management, as well as Director of York University’s Emergency Mitigation, Engagement, Governance, Response Institute (Y-EMERGE). Kennedy’s research focuses on wildfire management and the human and social dimensions of fire, particularly the use of data and evidence in fire decision-making. His lab group focuses on a central question: how might we help people, communities, and agencies live in better relationship with wildfire by integrating evidence and values? Current projects include enhancing the use of predictive services in fire management, increasing the uptake of wildfire mitigation by local governments, and building linkages between research users and producers in fire.
Established Researchers
Lily Cho
Department of English
Associate Professor
Dr. Lily Cho is an Associate Professor in the Department of English at York University. As one of Canada’s first specialists in Asian Canadian literature and culture, her scholarship contributes to the establishment and advancement of Asian Canadian Studies. She is the recipient of a 2026 Dorothy Killam Fellowship. Her publications are internationally recognized and widely cited. She is the author of Eating Chinese: Culture on the Menu in Small Town Canada (2010) and Mass Capture: Chinese Head Tax Certificates and the Making of Non-citizens (2021). Her nearly completed SSHRC-funded project examines the relationship between counterfeit goods and ideas of Asia. This year, she embarks on her Dorothy Killam project, which investigates how Chinese Canadian artists use historical archives to recuperate and repair histories of racism in Canada. She is President of the Association of Canadian College and University Teachers of English, Canada’s largest scholarly association for literary studies.
Robert W. Gehl
Department of Communication and Media Studies
Associate Professor
Dr. Robert W. Gehl is an associate professor in the Department of Communication and Media Studies at York University and Ontario Research Chair in Digital Governance for Social Justice. He is a Fulbright scholar and award-winning author whose research focuses on contemporary communication technologies. He received his PhD in Cultural Studies from George Mason University in 2010. Before joining York University as an Ontario Research Chair of Digital Governance for Social Justice, he previously held an endowed research chair at Louisiana Tech.
He has published over two dozen articles in journals such as New Media & Society, Communication Theory, Social Media + Society, and Media, Culture and Society. His books include Reverse Engineering Social Media (Temple 2014), which won the Nancy Baym Book Award from the Association of Internet Researchers, Weaving the Dark Web (MIT 2018), Social Engineering (MIT 2022), and Move Slowly and Build Bridges, published in 2025 by Oxford University Press. He also has published a co-edited collection of essays, Socialbots and Their Friends.
Distinction in Social Justice Research (Honorable Mention)
Thi Viet Nga Dao
Department of Social Science
Associate Professor
Dr. Nga Dao is a faculty member in the Department of Social Science. She holds a PhD in Geography from York University, an MA from Cornell University, and a MSc from SOAS, University of London. Her research explores slow violence, water (in)justice, river ecologies, and the roles of gender and youth in livelihood changes in Southeast Asia, particularly the Mekong region. She is the author of The Everyday Politics of Resources: Lives and Landscape in Northwest Vietnam (Cornell University Press, 2025). She co-edited Hydropower Development: Challenges for sustainability in Vietnam (2016), and Water Right and Social Justice in the Mekong Region (2011). Nga has also published her work in various peer-review journals, including the Journal of Peasant Studies, Journal of Environment and Planning C, Journal of Agrarian Change, Journal of Political Ecology, and Journal of Gender, Places and Culture.
Past Awards
Jelena Zikic
School of Human Resource Management
Established Researcher
Dr. Jelena Zikic, PhD (University of Toronto, Rotman School of Management) is a Professor at York University, School of Human Resource Management. Her research focuses on Career Transitions and associated challenges of various populations (migrants, baby boomers, unemployed, expats and others). In her work, she seeks to bridge micro type phenomena, such as Professional Identity with more macro-organizational processes (i.e., Integration of diverse workforce). Dr. Zikic brings significant international background, cross-cultural research collaborations and varied teaching expertise. Her work appeared in top ranked journals in her field such as Academy of Management Discoveries, Journal of Organizational Behavior, and Human Relations, among others; and her practical advise is often featured in the media and outlets such Harvard Business Review.
Sylvia Bawa
Department of Sociology
Emerging Researcher
Dr. Sylvia Bawa is an Associate Professor of Sociology at York University. She is a global sociologist with expertise in human rights, globalization, critical development, and postcolonial feminisms. Her research explores discourses around empowerment, decolonization, human rights, culture, and development. She has received multiple research awards for her work, including from SSHRC, CHIR, and York University, leading transnational collaborative research projects. She is the recipient of the LA&PS Dean’s Award for Research Excellence (2025). Some of her publications appear in high-impact journals, including Third World Quarterly, African Identities, Qualitative Report, Development in Practice, the Canadian Journal of African Studies, the International Journal of Human Rights of Women, and the Palgrave Handbook of African Women's Studies (Springer Major Reference Works Series). Her recently co-authored book, "Truth Commissions and State Building" (McGill-Queen’s, 2023), was selected as a runner-up for the best book anthology on African Studies by the African Studies Association.
Jean-Thomas Tremblay
Department of English
Emerging Researcher
Dr. Jean-Thomas Tremblay is an Associate Professor in the Department of English and the Director of the Graduate Program in Social and Political Thought at York University. He is the author of Breathing Aesthetics (Duke University Press, 2022), the co-author, with Steven Swarbrick, of Negative Life: The Cinema of Extinction (“Superimpositions: Philosophy and the Moving Image” series, Northwestern University Press, 2024), and the co-editor, with Andrew Strombeck, of Avant-Gardes in Crisis: Art and Politics in the Long 1970s (State University of New York Press, 2021).
Dr. Tremblay’s research in the fields of literary studies, cinema studies, sexuality studies, and the environmental humanities is supported by an Insight Development Grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. Excerpts from his current project, tentatively titled “The Climate after the Fact,” have appeared in Critical Inquiry and Representations. Dr. Tremblay serves on the editorial board of the journals Differences and Discourse.
Natalie Coulter
Department of Communication & Media Studies
Established Researcher
Natalie Coulter is an Associate Professor in Communication and Media Studies and Director of the Institute for Digital Literacies (IRDL) at York University, Canada. She is co-author of Media and Communication in Canada (9th ed) and co-editor of Youth Mediations and Affective Relations (2019) and author of Tweening the Girl (2014) She is a founding member of the Girls’ Studies Research Network (GSRN) at York University, and the Association for Research on the Cultures of Young People (ARCYP).
Carlo Fanelli
Department of Social Science
Established Researcher (Honourable Mention)
Carlo Fanelli’s current work revolves around two major projects. The first explores how urban austerity has impacted public services and labour-management relations in Canadian cities and how these experiences differ and/or share parallels with international examples. The second, led by Principal Investigator Bryan Evans (Ryerson University), explores how Canadian and international living wage movements have responded to low-waged and precarious work amid the erosion of social welfare nets and the widening of inequality across diverse social groups. I am also conducting work on the ‘uberization’ of the charter fishing industry on Lake Ontario, including the work-life implications this has had on operators and potential risks this poses for consumers and fisheries. I am also undertaking studies in the areas of unpaid internships and the nonprofit sector. I am happy to supervise student research in these areas and others related to work and labour studies more broadly. Since 2009, I have also been editor-in-chief of Alternate Routes: A Journal of Critical Social Research published by Athabasca University Press.
Abigail Shabtay
Department of Humanities
Emerging Researcher
Dr. Abigail Shabtay is an Assistant Professor in the Children, Childhood, and Youth program in the Department of Humanities. She is also appointed to the graduate programs in Theatre, Dance and Performance Studies, Education, Communication and Culture, and Humanities. Dr. Shabtay has received awards for excellence in teaching and research in her field, including the LA&PS Dean's Award for Distinction in Research (2022-2023), the Humanities Award for Teaching Excellence (2020-2021), the York Student Accessibility Award (2020-2021), and the Ada Slaight Drama-in-Education Research Award (2018-2019). Dr. Shabtay’s research focuses on children’s rights, social justice, child-centred research methodologies, experiential pedagogies, theatre with children and youth, youth activism, and drama-based participatory action research. She is currently the Principal Investigator for multiple SSHRC-funded projects related to children, youth, and the performing arts. She has served on organizing committees for eight academic conferences in her field and is the Chair of the annual "Children, Youth and Performance Conference".
Cary Wu
Department of Sociology
Emerging Researcher
Cary Wu (PhD, UBC) is an assistant professor of sociology at York University. His research focuses on political culture, race and ethnicity, and health inequality. He has published widely on these topics and often shares his research with the public via national and international TV, radio, and newspaper forums including NPR, CBC, CTV, Washington Post, Toronto Star, Maclean’s, and The Economist. He is currently working on a five-year (2022-2026) SSHRC Insight Grant research project to develop a political sociology of health (PSH) to study social and political trust as essential determinants of health.
