Four researchers in areas covering Indigenous sovereignty to international ecological issues impacting the society will receive nearly $2.5M each

TORONTO, August 29, 2023 – The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) announced today nearly $10 million in Partnerships Grants funding for four York University researchers, who study pressing societal issues from both local and global perspectives.

“Today’s funding announcement highlights the council’s faith in the high calibre of our researchers’ work ranging from Indigenous Circumpolar Cultural Sovereignty, Ecological footprint to renewable greener transition and policy gaps in international mobility in collaboration with other local and international subject experts,” says Amir Asif, vice-president research and innovation. “I thank SHHRC for their support and I commend York’s research community for their ongoing commitment to creating positive change, both locally and globally.” 

The four Partnership Grants recipients of nearly $2.5 million each and their projects spanning six to seven years are:

Visual arts and art history Professor Anna Hudson, School of the Arts, Media, Performance & Design will receive the funding for her project “Curating Indigenous Circumpolar Cultural Sovereignty: advancing Inuit and Sámi homelands, food, art, archives and worldviews.” The project will leverage curation on unprecedented local, national, and global scales to address the importance of cultural sovereignty for Inuit, Sámi and Alaska Native decolonization, says Hudson.

Professor Peter Alan Victor in the Faculty of Environment and Urban Change leads “The International Ecological Footprint Learning Lab: Training, research, and novel applications.” The lab uses York University created Ecological Footprint and Biocapacity (EFB) method to study environmental conditions that threaten human and ecological well-being around the world. Through the partnership, the lab aims to develop talent in using EFB to manage humanity's use of Earth's resources and apply this to increasingly intersecting issues of sustainability and justice.

The project “African Extractivism and the Greener Transition” led by politics Professor Richard Saunders will build on the insights of a multidisciplinary team of partners in place since 2018, to study the dynamics of minerals used in renewable energy technologies, found in Southern Africa, including the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe. The project will utilize partners’ proven records in supporting policy-making processes, community outreach and research training for civil society organizations, and engage a diverse range of stakeholders with the aim of transforming policy debates into action.

Professor Leah Vosko, also from the politics department of LA&PS faculty, leads “Liberating Migrant Labour?: International Mobility Programs in Settler-Colonial Contexts” that seeks to address policy gaps in international mobility programs, having identified a pressing need for investigation into the conditions and outcomes of such programs. Researchers will also study traditional temporary labour migration programs in the context of settler-colonial states, whose political economies are premised upon the dispossession of Indigenous lands, resources, and political autonomy, and immigration regimes shaped historically by racialized distinctions between migrants and settlers.

In addition, 21 York-led projects received more than $4 million in Insight Grants, awarded to emerging and established scholars in the social sciences and humanities to work on research projects of two to five years.

The SSHRC also announced $1.5 million funding under the Partnership Development Grants Program for 10 York researchers for collaboration with new or existing partners, and to design and test new partnership approaches.

For a complete list of the grants click here.