Orignally posted on Carleton Newsroom
Carleton University will receive more than $2.3 million in Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Insight Grants and Insight Development Grants. The funding is divided among 20 researchers covering a diverse range of projects and was announced by Greg Rickford, Minister of State (Science and Technology). The projects range from Unesco and photography and the sexual revolution to the history of painting in Britain to understanding AIDS as a political crisis.
Insight Development Grants support research in its initial stages. The grants enable the development of new research questions, as well as experimentation with new methods, theoretical approaches and/or ideas. Funding is provided for short-term research development projects, of up to two years, proposed by individuals or teams.
Long-term support for research is offered through SSHRC’s Insight Grants.
“As a research intensive university, Carleton is proud of its many nationally funded researchers and we are very pleased to see the commitment by the federal government to the social sciences and the humanities,” said Kim Matheson, vice-president (Research and International). “These newly funded projects at Carleton will help advance knowledge and understanding of important issues we all face as a society and will have an impact on bettering the lives of all Canadians.”
One of this year’s Insight Grant recipients is Alexis Shotwell, associate professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology. Shotwell’s project, AIDS Activist History Project, focuses on collecting oral histories and ephemera from Canadians who were involved in AIDS activism in the late 80s and early 90s. This is exciting and important work because there has not been a sustained project bringing together reflections on how social responses to HIV and AIDS were organized in Canada over this time period.
“It’s wonderful to have this funding,” said Shotwell. “It will allow us to interview people across the country who were involved in vibrant and sometimes outrageous activism in response to the government’s handling of HIV and AIDS in the early days of the epidemic. This kind of work is an exciting way to refuse to forget the struggle of people who worked hard – some even while they were dying – so that we could live in a better world today.”
Achim Hurrelmann, associate professor with the Department of Political Science, also received an Insight Grant for his project, The Eurozone Crisis and the Politicization of European Integration. This project will examine the longer-term implications that the crisis — and the attention that it has generated — will have for democratic politics in the European Union: Will the crisis lead to an increased politicization of EU affairs, meaning that citizens follow EU politics more attentively and participate more actively in EU-related political discourse? If so, which debates and controversies will gain importance, and how will they affect the future of European integration? The study will contribute to broader academic and political debates about the ways in which the shift of political power to regional and global institutions reconfigures democratic politics.
“Traditionally, most Europeans had very little interest in politics at the EU level,” said Hurrelmann. “My research examines whether the Eurozone financial crisis will change this. With the help of the SSHRC grant, I will study political discourses in parliaments, the media and among ordinary citizens from 2008 up until 2016. My goal is to find out whether Europe becomes a more important political issue, and if so, what type of debates and controversies develop about it. Such patterns of politicization ultimately determine whether the crisis will result in more European integration, or whether it will tear the EU apart.”