A new fund is encouraging Brock University researchers and scholars to play a part in the 2021 Canada Summer Games in Niagara.

As a key stakeholder in hosting the national event, Brock University can use this unprecedented occasion to conduct a wide array of research and scholarship, says Vice-President, Research Tim Kenyon.

“There are amazing opportunities to investigate the athletic, economic, political, social and cultural impacts that hosting a major sport event such as a Canada Games have on the immediate community and surrounding area,” he says. 

To that end, the Office of the Vice-President, Research has created a special fund that researchers and scholars can apply to.

The VPR Canada Games Grants program supports Brock researchers and scholars in all departments and Faculties with modest funding to undertake research or a creative activity in any discipline and on any topic that relates to the Canada Games.

The grant, valued up to $7,000 per single project, could be used to hire student research assistants, cover research travel expenses, purchase research tools and supplies for creative activities, pay costs associated with data collection and community outreach, and for knowledge mobilization/translation. 

The research and scholarship covered by the grant could include an array of projects, such as studying the process of planning and hosting a major sport event, development of major games from the days of antiquity and gathering a wide array of community-created data from Niagara. 

“These and other diverse, multidisciplinary research areas will involve researchers from all areas of the University, from Humanities to Business to Social Sciences to Education to the Sciences and Applied Health Sciences,” says Kenyon.

Jonathan Younker, Head of Library Systems and Technology and Chair of the Brock-Canada Games Research Sub-Committee, says the Library is working on adding a unique Canada Games collection within the Brock University Digital Repository for community data that researchers can potentially tap into. 

“Videos, photographs, journals, essays, reports and other materials gathered between now and 2021 create a vivid snapshot of Niagara at this time that future research on both the Games and the region can use as a baseline,” he says.

There will be an information session on Monday, Oct. 7 at which a representative of the Canada Games Council and the 2021 Canada Summer Games Host Society (Niagara 2021) will address research needs and answer questions. The session’s time and location will be announced at a later date. 

The deadline to apply for a grant is Nov. 11. 

Details can be found in the VPR Canada Games Grants Program Guidelines and the Canada Games Grant Application Instructions posted on the VPR Canada Games Grants program page on SharePoint.

For more information, contact Research Officer Kathryn Hunter at  khunter@brocku.ca