A total of 12 Queen’s University researchers are recipients of nearly $610,000 in combined funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) Insight Development Grant program. Part of the  Insight and Partnership Grants suite, the programs are designed to support research projects across a range of disciplines in their early stages and build knowledge and understanding about people, societies, and the world.

The projects being funded at Queen’s involve a range of research, including investigating the building blocks of constructing gender and race in primary education and testing for independent experts to improve Canada’s federal transfer system.

“With a number of these grants going to early-career researchers at the university, this program provides the opportunity to develop our talent at Queen’s,” says Kimberly Woodhouse, Vice-Principal (Research). “The funded projects approach societal challenges in creative and innovative ways and, ultimately, will provide better insight into the world around us.”

This year’s successful recipients include:

Grace Adeniyi Ogunyankin (Geography and Planning) Youth, Labour and Neoliberal Urban Transformation in Ibadan, Nigeria, $72,636

Ragavendran Gopalakrishnan (Smith School of Business) Behaviour-Aware Queueing Models for Smart Service Operations, $60,100

Eun-Young Lee (Kinesiology and Health Studies) No Level Playing Field: Towards Quantifying Intersectionality in Large-scale Population Studies, $50,026

Nora Fayed (School of Rehabilitation Therapy) Wellbeing Priorities for Children with Highly Complex Disabilities and their Parents, $38,097

Colin Grey (Law) Humanitarianism and the Justification of Deportation for Criminality, $41,742

Kyle Hanniman (Political Studies) Popular Support for Unpopular Reforms:  Testing the Potential of Independent Experts to Improve Canada’s Federal Transfer System, $46,032

Alyssa King (Law) Travelling Judges, Moonlighting Arbitrators, and Global Common Law, $27,370

Reena Kukreja (Global Development Studies) Undocumented South Asian Male Migrants in Greece: Understanding Masculinity, Love and Work in Troubled Times, $53,529

Jeremy Stewart (Psychology) Unpacking Suicide Capability: Refining the Definition and Measurement of Fearlessness about death, $72,972

Kristy Timmons (Education) Inequity at the Starting Line: The Influence of Teacher Expectations, Beliefs and Practices on Learning Outcomes in Kindergarten, $61,446

Dan Cohen (Geography and Planning) Financing Social Progress: Market-making and Canada’s Social Finance Fund, $46.739

Sumon Majumdar (Economics) Do Immigrants Face Barriers in Access to Local Public Services in Canada?   $43,576

Through the 2019-2020 competition, SSHRC has awarded over $32 million to more than 1,045 researchers from 69 Canadian institutions.

Insight Development Grants support research in its early stages. They enable the development of new research questions, as well as experimentation with new methods, theoretical approaches or ideas. Funding is provided to individuals or teams for projects of up to two years.

For more information visit, the SSHRC website.

Don’t miss out on research funding opportunities, subscribe to the University Research Services Funding Opportunities  listserv. 

The numbers are staggering. COVID-19 has infected people in 212 countries, on every continent except Antarctica. More than 13 million people have been infected, and more than 574,000 have died, according to the World Health Organization.

Vast changes to our home lives, social interactions, government functioning, and relations between countries have swept through the world in a few short months. Two Queen’s experts have joined a variety of other authors and, in just eight short weeks, were able to collaborate on a new book that confronts some of the vulnerabilities and interconnectedness that have been made visible by the pandemic.

The book, titled Vulnerable: The Law, Policy & Ethics of COVID-19, was co-edited by Jane Philpott, Dean, Faculty of Health Sciences at Queen’s University, along with three professors from the University of Ottawa, and one from King’s College London .  

The edited volume analyzes the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and includes 43 chapters and features over 70 authors, including Queen’s University Law Professor Gregoire Webber, Canada Research Chair in Public Law and Philosophy of Law.

“My invitation to participate in the project came from Dr. Philpott directly,” says Dr. Webber. “She and I worked together on a number of files when she was Minister of Health and I was Legal Affairs Advisor to the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada.”

Webber’s chapter is entitled The Duty to Govern and the Rule of Law during an Emergency. He examines how, during the pandemic, members of the executive and legislative branches of governments around the world retreated while members of the executive branch assumed greater responsibilities. The question is, it is justified, and what is the duty on those exercising authoritative power to return to the normal situation as soon as circumstances allow.

“Even though forecasts for the COVID-19 pandemic range from the medium to long term, there is every reason to resist concluding that extraordinary powers of government are a new normal,” says Dr. Webber. “In situations between normal and exceptional, extraordinary powers may need to be maintained, but those with responsibility to rule should seek to reestablish normal order where it is possible.”

As an accomplished physician, educator, and former federal cabinet minister, Dean Philpott brings an important health care perspective to the book. She recently returned to the front lines to battle the COVID-19 pandemic in the Greater Toronto Area, and was named the province’s special advisor on the new Ontario Health Data Platform to help better track the virus and determine who is most at risk.

“COVID-19 is both a public health crisis and an urgent call to action on social justice. With the focus on vulnerability, it is also an opportunity for transformative policy and law reforms,” says Dean Philpott.

Together, the collection of essays provides new insights on how countries should aim to govern in a pandemic, and what lessons must be learned to help inform upcoming recovery plans, whether they pertain to public health policy, social equity, or the economy.

The authors of the collection say they hope COVID-19 will force us to deeply reflect on how we govern and set our policy priorities to include everyone.

Vulnerable: The Law, Policy and Ethics of COVID-19 is available in July both free of charge via open access and in print form through the University of Ottawa Press.