Media releases

• Anthropocene research among Brock projects to receive $965,000 in SSHRC funding

  Wednesday, August 30, 2023 | By Brock University

  MEDIA RELEASE: Aug 30 2023 – R0076

  It’s being called the “bomb pulse,” the sharp spike of carbon-14 in the Earth’s atmosphere arising out of fallout from nuclear bomb testing in the 1950s and ’60s.

  This fallout has changed the Earth so much that the international geologic community is poised to formally declare a new epoch in Earth’s history, the Anthropocene.

  Through their work, Brock University Professor of Philosophy Christine Daigle and her team are taking scientific evidence found in Brock-led geologic research to the next level.

  “What does the Anthropocene teach us about ourselves and the various entangled temporalities of past, present and future humans and non-humans?” says Daigle, Director of Brock’s Posthumanism Research Institute.

  Daigle is among seven Brock researchers awarded Insight Grants from the federal government’s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), announced Tuesday, Aug. 29 by Canada’s Minister of Employment, Workforce Development and Official Languages Randy Boissonnault, on behalf of François-Philippe Champagne, Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry, and Mark Holland, Minister of Health.

  Brock received $965,636 in Insight Grant funding, which supports research excellence and sees projects judged worthy of funding by fellow researchers and/or other experts. The research can be conducted individually or by teams.

  Also included in the Aug. 29 announcement was other federal government funding for Brock, including:

  • a $2.5-million SSHRC Partnership Grant
  • the renewal of Associate Professor of Psychology Karen Campbell’s Canada Research Chair in Cognitive Neuroscience of Aging.
  • $4.8 million in funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council’s Discover/Explore program
  • $295,000 for research infrastructure under the Canada Foundation for Innovation’s John R. Evans Leaders Fund

  “The wide range of research funded through these competitive awards shares something important,” says Brock Vice-President, Research Tim Kenyon. “It reflects expert engagement with the critical issues of our community, country and world.”

  Daigle’s project, “Bomb Pulse: Cultural and Philosophical Readings of Time Signatures in the Anthropocene,” focuses on interpreting layers of sediment in Halton’s Crawford Lake collected by Brock Professor of Earth Sciences Francine McCarthy and her team.

  The sediment layers contain evidence of a wide range of recent human activity, including nuclear fallout, fertilizers, fly ash, plastics and greenhouse gases. Further back in time are traces of pollen, an early sign of cultivation, which led to archaeological digs unearthing the remains of a 15th-century Indigenous village close to the lake.

  Daigle’s team, which includes McCarthy and Professor of English Adam Dickinson, is exploring how philosophical thinking, creative writing and artistic explorations can help society reflect on how human activities have impacted the Earth and provoke discussions on environmental sustainability, extinction and the collective future.

  The team’s partners include Conservation Halton, the Royal Ontario Museum, the Canadian Museum of Nature and an Indigenous Elder and knowledge-keeper, among others.

  “Our transdisciplinary research into cores of sedimented layers and their meanings will help us establish the understanding that beings — organic and non-organic — are entangled and their agencies inflect each other,” says Daigle. “This has profound ethical and social implications for our future.”

  Brock University’s 2023 SSHRC Insight Grant recipients are:

  • Gregory Betts, Professor, English Language and Literature, Faculty of Humanities, “How to Speak to Aliens: bpNichol and the Cosmic Other”
  • Alison Braley-Rattai, Associate Professor, Labour Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences, “Union Responses to Workplace Vaccine Mandates in the Wake of COVID-19”
  • Christine Daigle, Professor, Philosophy, Faculty of Humanities: “Bomb Pulse: Cultural and Philosophical Readings of Time Signatures in the Anthropocene”
  • Hannah Dyer, Associate Professor, Child and Youth Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences, “Drawing Queer and Trans Kinship: Learning about Family through Children’s Art”
  • Kyle Rich, Associate Professor, Recreation and Leisure Studies, Faculty of Applied Health Sciences, “A Regional Analysis of Sport Policy Implementation”
  • Samir Trabelsi, Professor, Accounting, Goodman School of Business, “The Determinants and Impacts of Social Washing”
  • Louis Volante, Professor, Faculty of Education, “The impact of the pandemic on socioeconomic inequality and student learning outcomes: A pan-Canadian analysis with policy implications”

  For more information or for assistance arranging interviews:

  * Doug Hunt, Communications and Media Relations Specialist, Brock University dhunt2@brocku.ca or 905-941-6209 

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  Categories: Media releases

• Brock co-led team awarded $2.5M for project giving minoritized voices centre stage in transforming theatre education

  Tuesday, August 29, 2023 | By Brock University

  MEDIA RELEASE: Aug 29 2023 – R0075

  Deneh’Cho Thompson, a displaced and dispossessed member of the Pehdzeh ki Nation, became an academic because he wanted others to have a better experience with theatre education than he did.

  Responding to experiences such as Thompson’s, a Brock University co-led research project is putting the spotlight on minoritized voices.

  Staging Better Futures/Mettre en scène de meilleurs avenirs (SBF/MSMA) is the first national, cross-sectoral partnership approach to decolonizing, anti-racist, equitable, diverse and inclusive systemic change ever undertaken in post-secondary theatre education in Canada.

  On Tuesday, Aug. 29, it was announced the project has been awarded a $2.5-million Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Partnership Grant. Contributions from partner organizations bring the project budget to more than $5.5 million, with Brock making the largest partner organization contribution of $1.57 million in cash and in-kind contributions over seven years.

  The funding announcement — made by Randy Boissonnault, Minister of Employment, Workforce Development and Official Languages, on behalf of François-Philippe Champagne, Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry, and Mark Holland, Minister of Health — included more than $960 million supporting more than 4,700 researchers and research projects across Canada.

  Jennifer Roberts-Smith, Professor and Chair of Dramatic Arts (DART) at Brock, is co-leader of SBF/MSMA along with Nicole Nolette, University of Waterloo Associate Professor of French Studies and Canada Research Chair in Minority Studies. They observed that while Canadian universities and colleges have been working on local equity initiatives, there is no platform yet for sharing valuable information on providing an equitable and welcoming environment for minoritized theatre students and educators.

  Thompson dropped out of high school and college and took more than 10 years to finish his undergraduate degree because of the systemic racism he experienced. He is now a member of the governance committee on the project.

  Even while he was a student, as interest increased in Indigenous theatre, Thompson found people, including faculty and mentors, looked to him to provide Indigenous expertise.

  But “I was alone,” he said of his time studying in Vancouver. “I didn’t have supports in the university or in my program. I didn’t have anyone I could look up to.”

  Thompson has since become an Assistant Professor and co-ordinator of the wîcêhtowin Theatre Program at the University of Saskatchewan’s Department of Drama.

  SBF/MSMA’s key areas of focus are racialization; Indigeneity; gender diversity; disability; and linguistic minoritization. The project’s guiding principle is that it centres the voices of students and educators with lived experiences of exclusion, such as Thompson.

  Brock DART students Hayley King and Benoit St-Aubin echo Thompson’s calls for greater representation of faculty from historically under-represented backgrounds in theatre departments.

  “In attempts to sympathize with and accurately represent the experience of Black, Indigenous and People of Colour (BIPOC) students onstage, non-BIPOC individuals fall prone to tokenism and misrepresentation,” said King, who is of biracial Black and South Asian descent. “Having someone in the department with the same lived experiences as these students can serve as a voice for them when injustices are committed.”

  For St-Aubin, who is from the Niagara region and whose first language is French, it’s also important to decolonize curriculum and repertoire.

  “Historically, Canadian theatre has subscribed to Eurocentric ideologies, which has skewed the education we receive,” they said. “By introducing non-Western, non-European theatre practices to students, our department can shape us into well-rounded theatre practitioners and academics.”

  Roberts-Smith said there needs to be a transition “from small-scale solutions within our own institutions to thinking collaboratively about how we do post-secondary theatre education more equitably across Canada.”

  In the course of preparing the grant, the project leaders developed a wide network of collaborators with lived experience of systemic inequity and expertise in combating it. The fully bilingual project now involves more than 90 participants across Canada, with representation from colleges, universities, theatre companies, arts services organizations, a student caucus and a freelance artist-educator consultancy. There are seven Brock faculty members involved in the project, mostly from Dramatic Arts.

  “Receiving this prestigious, highly competitive award is an outstanding achievement,” said Brock University Vice-President, Research Tim Kenyon.

  “The research team’s success demonstrates the need for systemic practices and structures in dramatic arts education to be transformed so that knowledge and expertise from minoritized artist-educators form a core part of the education,” he said.

  The Partnership Grant covers a period of seven years.

  Partnership Grants are the largest that SSHRC offers, supporting formal partnerships between academic researchers, businesses and other partners that will advance knowledge and understanding on critical issues of intellectual, social, economic and cultural significance.

  In addition to the Partnership Grants, SSHRC announced Tuesday that seven Brock researchers were awarded a total $965,636 in Insight Grants, which support research judged worthy of funding by fellow researchers and/or other experts. The University also received more than $4.8 million in funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada for a variety of projects.

  For more information or for assistance arranging interviews: 

  * Doug Hunt, Communications and Media Relations Specialist, Brock University dhunt2@brocku.ca or 905-941-6209 

  For those who have questions about access and this project, please contact Sarah Fraser at sbf.msma@gmail.com or by mail: c/o Dramatic Arts, Brock University, 1812 Sir Isaac Brock Way, St. Catharines, ON L2S 3A1.

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  Categories: Media releases