“The fundamental purpose of research administration is a simple one. It is to enable all scholars and investigators to make good on their research aspirations. My job is to make sure that researchers have the support to do the things that they’re great at. It’s a matter of providing the conditions for your colleagues to be their best.” – Dr. Tim Kenyon

Please note – Dr. Tim Kenyon has been appointed as the Interim Provost and Vice President, Academic, https://brocku.ca/brock-news/2023/12/tim-kenyon-appointed-interim-provost-and-vice-president-academic and Dr. Michelle McGinn is now the Acting Vice President of Research for 2024.

Since becoming Brock University’s Vice-President, Research in 2018, Dr. Tim Kenyon has focused on supporting the Strategic Plan priority of building research capacity across the institution. During this time the University has seen significant growth in the range of internal programs that facilitate the scholarship, innovation, research, and creative activity of all researchers, while new facilities such as Brock LINC and the Validating, Prototyping, and Manufacturing Facility have also been inaugurated.

Dr. Kenyon looks forward to the continued expansion of these and other programs and facilities to enhance funding, impact, and recognition for Brock researchers, while promoting institutional values of diversity, equity, decolonization, and community engagement. Dr. Kenyon says research exists to make a difference, and Brock’s research community has the creativity and inspiration to show just how great a difference it can make.

Prior to joining Brock, Dr. Kenyon held research and teaching positions at the University of St. Andrews, the University of Alberta, University of Aberdeen, and the University of Waterloo, where he served terms as Chair of the Philosophy Department and Associate Dean for the Faculty of Arts, and received the University of Waterloo Distinguished Teacher Award. He was President of the Canadian Philosophical Association in 2015-16, and is a member of the Executive for the Ontario Council for University Research.

Understanding the General Research Fund

In keeping with general Tri-Agency policies, when Brock researchers hold SSHRC and NSERC grants that are partially unspent at the conclusion of the formal grant periods, the remaining funds are transferred into General Research Funds, or GRF. The University may use GRF for other research support purposes, consistent with the broad field/topic areas of the agencies from which the funding originated.

These funds can support internal grant programs, for example. However, Brock permits researchers to request a period of continued individual access to unspent grant funding after it has migrated to GRF, at the discretion of the Vice President, Research. Normally this request is granted. Read the blog.

 

Institutional procurement policies for research purchases: A background on why

Why are major research equipment and contract purchases required to go through the University’s procurement process, including seeking competitive bids? Why not simply permit the direct sole-source purchase of research equipment? Are institutional procurement policies setting up needless barriers to research? These questions sometimes arise in conversations with researchers, and for perfectly understandable reasons.

Researchers often have a clear vision of what they want and understand better than anyone else the project for which the purchase is needed. Researchers are usually seeking to buy equipment or execute contracts because they have already secured funding for it through a competitive grant process. These processes involve justifying the purchase and an associated budget in great detail. So why the need to justify it again? Read the blog.

 

Understanding the Matching and Discretionary Grant Portals

In 2019, Brock University introduced two research funding request portals. The portals can be used to request either research matching funds, or discretionary funding support. This new application tool was widely announced when the portal webpage was introduced, and has been the subject of further communications from time to time. Since its introduction, these request portals have become active sources of funding requests from Brock researchers. They have served to facilitate and coordinate matching requests for many successful grant applications, and to enable the management of many research expenses that could not have been borne by researchers alone. I appreciate, though, that researchers at all levels are often overwhelmed with information and communiqués. It may therefore be worth providing another information update. This brief blog post will focus on what the portals are, why they were introduced, and how they work. Read the blog.

 

Research exists to make a difference.

This might look like a platitude; at least, it ought to seem a platitude. But when we take it seriously, it turns out to have some substantive implications. Is it true? Platitudes sometimes aren’t, but this one is. Whether our research is basic or applied in its design and conception, curiosity-driven or contract-based, we researchers are all committed at some level to the idea that research exists to make a difference.

If research should make a difference, then as both a researcher and a research administrator I have some questions to ask myself. Read the blog.

 

The Mid-Career Slump, Part 1

Many of us in the academy have either witnessed or personally experienced how the excitement of becoming a tenure-track faculty member, and the energy (and anxiety) of working towards tenure and promotion, can be followed by a downturn in research activity. This is turn can be associated with a downturn in morale, in engagement, and in work-life balance. Mid-career faculty members and researchers often face a range of these challenges to their research aspirations and identity.

To start, let’s look at some of the common research obstacles that mid-career faculty face. Read the blog.

 

The Mid-Career Slump, Part 2

In my previous post, I reviewed some of the difficulties that can lead to a mid-career slump for tenure-stream research faculty. It is not uncommon for faculty members to experience at least some slowdown in their research post-tenure, as the nature of their jobs and their lives evolves. For people who love research, and who partly define their professional identity in terms of their research interests and aspirations, this can be a disconcerting or demoralizing experience.

What can be done to forestall, mitigate, and emerge from such a slowdown? Read the blog.

 

The Mid-Career Slump, Part 3

In my previous two messages, I outlined some of the difficulties that mid-career faculty members may experience as part of a real or perceived research slowdown or slump of some duration, and I proposed some strategies and tips that might help one avoid such a slump, or quickly reverse it once it begins.

What can be done, though, when a research slowdown has progressed beyond that point – when a researcher begins to worry that there is a glaring gap in their CV, or that they have fallen far out of contact with the state of research in their field? Read the blog.

A brief profile of Dr. Tim Kenyon’s research

I write (and speak, and think) about issues in Philosophy of Language (the nature of assertion, coerced speech, testimony, naming); Social Epistemology (the epistemology of testimony, disagreement, ignorance); Critical Thinking (pedagogy, debiasing); Philosophy of Mind (cognitive science, personhood, belief ascription); Metaphysics (antirealism, knowability); Philosophical Logic (theories of truth, doxastic logic), and Bibliometry and Research Measurement.

PhD in Philosophy, University of Western Ontario, 1998

MA in Philosophy, Carleton University, 1994

BA Hons in Philosophy, 1992; University of British Columbia

Books

2007:  Clear Thinking in a Blurry World.  Toronto: Nelson Academic. 378 pp.

2006:  A Logical Approach to Philosophy (Co-edited with David DeVidi).  Western Ontario Series in Philosophy of Science.  Dordrecht: Springer. 227 pp.

Articles in books

2022: (Co-author: Jennifer Saul) Bald-faced bullshit and authoritarian political speech: Making sense of Johnson and Trump. Forthcoming in Horn, Larry (ed.), From Lying to Perjury: Linguistic and Legal Perspectives on Lies and Other Falsehoods. De Gruyter.

2018: Disagreement. Routledge Handbook of Applied Epistemology (D. Coady and J. Chase, eds). New York: Routledge. 233-246.

2006: Introduction (with David DeVidi), A Logical Approach to Philosophy (D. DeVidi and T. Kenyon eds). Western Ontario Series in Philosophy of Science.  Dordrecht: Springer.

2006: Idealized psychology and doxastic logic. Paradox:  Logical, Cognitive and Communicative Aspects.  Jurgis Skilters, Ed., University of Latvia. 141-6.

2005: Non-sentences, implicature and success in communication. Ellipsis and Non-Sentential Speech, (Studies in Linguistics and Philosophy).  R.Elugardo and R.Stainton (eds.).  Dordrecht: Springer. 131-148.

2000: Indeterminacy and realism. Dennett’s Philosophy:  A Comprehensive Assessment.  Brook, Ross and Thompson (eds.).  Cambridge USA:  MIT Press. 77-94.

Journal articles (anonymized peer-review)

2020: Peer idealization and internal examples in the epistemology of disagreement. (CPA Prize-Winning Essay) Dialogue 59.1: 69-79. doi.org/10.1017/S0012217319000374

2016: The scope of debiasing in the classroom. Topoi. doi:10.1007/s11245-016-9398-8 (Co-author: Guillaume Beaulac).

2016: Oral history and the epistemology of testimony. Social Epistemology. 30.1: 45-66. (First published online March 2015). DOI: 10.1080/02691728.2014.971912

2014: Critical thinking education and debiasing. Informal Logic 34.4: 341-363. (Co-author: Guillaume Beaulac).

2014: Defining and measuring research impact in the humanities, social sciences and creative arts in the digital age. Knowledge Organization 41.3: 249-257.

2014: False polarization: Debiasing as applied social epistemology. Synthese 191.11: 2529-2547.

2013: The informational richness of testimonial contexts. Philosophical Quarterly 63.250: 58-80.

2013:  Noninferentialism and testimonial belief fixation. Episteme 10.1: 73-85.

2010:  Assertion and capitulation. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 91.3: 352-68.

2005:  Are names ambiguous? Compositionality, Concepts and Representations I: New Problems in Cognitive Science: Protosociology 21: 140-51.

2003:  Analogues of knowability. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 81.4: 481-95 (Co-author: David DeVidi)

2003:  Cynical assertion:  Convention, pragmatics, and saying ‘Uncle.’ American Philosophical Quarterly 40.3: 241-8.

1999:  Non-sentential assertions and the Dependence Thesis of word meaning. Mind and Language 14.4: 424-40.

1999: Truth, knowability and neutrality. Noûs 33.1: 103-17.

1998:  Searle rediscovers what was not lost. Dialogue (Canadian Philosophical Review). 37.1: 117-30.

Book reviews

2021: Review of Nathan Ballantyne, Knowing Our Limits. Metaphilosophy 52.2: 325-331.

2003:  Review of Gary Ebbs, Realism and Rule-Following. Philosophy in Review, April.

2000:  Review of José Luis Bermúdez, The Paradox of Self-Consciousness. Psyche, 6 (Journal of the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness).

2000:  Review of Luciano Floridi, Philosophy and Computing; An Introduction. Ends and Means, 4:2, 26-7.

1999: Review of Jennifer Hornsby, Simple Mindedness. Dialogue, 38:3, 656-9.

Other scholarly work (Invited; academic encyclopedias; refereed conference proceedings)

2019: Introduction. Educar Para o Pensamento Crítico na Sala de Aula. Pinto Lopes, Santos Silva, Dominguez & Nascimento, eds. Pactor: Lisboa.

2016: Critical thinking for engineers and engineering critical thinking. Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference of the Portuguese Society for Engineering Education. ISBN 978-1-5090-3913-5

2011: Critical thinking in the workplace: A course design and implementation. Andres, G., Kenyon, T., Peariso, R., Pretti, J., Stubley, G. Conference Proceedings of the Canadian Engineering Education Association.

2006:  Semantic paradoxes. The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, 2^nd Ed Keith Brown (Ed.), Elsevier: Oxford.

2004: ‘Marvin Minsky’, Dictionary of Modern American Philosophers.  E. Lepore, ed.  Bristol: Thoemmes Press.

2004: ‘John McCarthy’, Dictionary of Modern American Philosophers.  E. Lepore, ed.  Bristol: Thoemmes Press.

2003:  Guest editor’s introduction:  The limits of warrant.  Special issue of Eidos 17.1: 1-5

Presentations & lectures (5 years; * = anonymously-reviewed; † = invited or non-reviewed)

† March 2022: Management versus leadership: The role of authentic leadership. Invited panelist for Erasmus+ program workshop, Universität Siegen.

† March 2022: Bald-Faced Bullshit and Authoritarian Political Speech. Research colloquium presentation, Department of Philosophy, McMaster University.

† February 2022: Critical thinking for law and for life. Guest lecture to Law Plus Year 2 program, Brock University.

† January 2022: Being a good person to have in the room: The value of critical thinking skills. Guest lecture to Law Plus Year 3 program, Brock University.

† November 2021: Whataboutism. Deception Workshop, University of Waterloo.

* May 2021: Acceptance without defeat. Canadian Philosophical Association annual meeting, University of Alberta/virtual.

† October 2020: Critical thinking skills for authentic leadership. Invited panelist for Erasmus+ program workshop, Universität Siegen.

† July 2020: Critical thinking in the workplace. Public video lecture for Goodman School of Business, Brock University.

† April 2020 (currently postponed): The worth of commitment. Invited keynote lecture, Philosophy Union Annual Conference, University of Toronto.

† January 2020: Accepting testimony and believing testimony. Department of Philosophy, University of Waterloo

† June 2019: Peer idealization, internal examples, and the meta-philosophy of genius in the epistemology of disagreement. Canadian Philosophical Association annual meeting, Vancouver.

† April 2019: The epistemology of corroborative testimony. Humanities Institute Spring Symposium, Brock University.

† May 2018: Commentary on ‘The epistemology of testimonial trust’. Social Epistemology Network conference, Oslo.

† February 2018: Phenomena and theory in the epistemology of testimony. Department of Philosophy, University of Victoria.

† November 2017: Dois dilemas do pensamento crítico. Centro de Estudos Humanísticos, Universidade dos Açores.

† February 2017: Epistemic kinds of testimony. LanCog  (Language, Mind and Cognition Research Group),  University of Lisbon.

† February 2017: ‘Disagreement, from theory to practice,’ and ‘Content drift and why it matters to philosophers and others’. Invited lectures at ArgLab, the Reasoning and Argumentation Lab at IFILNOVA, New University of Lisbon

† February 2017: ‘Characterizing research impacts in and around the humanities’ and ‘Interpreting and applying research metrics: Reflections of a humanist at a STEM-heavy university’. Presentations to the Institute for the Humanities, University of Manitoba

† November 2016: Why impacts? Why an impact project? Symposium on community-based research impacts, Canadian Federation of Humanities and Social Sciences annual meeting, University of Toronto

* October 2016: Critical thinking for engineers, and engineering critical thinking. CISPEE conference, UTAD, Vila Real, Portugal

May 2016: Eliteness and diversity in Philosophy. Presidential Address, Canadian Philosophical Association Annual Meeting, University of Calgary

† May 2016: Addressing bias. Symposium presentation, Ontario Society for Studies in Argumentation, University of Windsor

† November 2015: Saving the epistemic phenomenon. Keynote address at the Canadian Society for Epistemology annual conference, Université de Montréal

† November 2015: Social cognition in social epistemology. CRISCo research group (Le Cercle de recherche de l’Institut des sciences cognitives), Concordia University

† August 2015: Commentary on Alex Barber, ‘Lying, duplicity and deception’. Language, Cognition and Context Workshop, Montevideo, Uruguay

† May 2015: Modeling fallibility in critical thinking instruction. Keynote workshop at the Second International Seminar on Critical Thinking, Universidade de Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro, Vila Real, Portugal

* February 2015: The scope of debiasing in the classroom. Conference presentation at Reasoning, Argumentation, and Critical Thinking Instruction (RACT 2015), Lund University, Sweden. (With Guillaume Beaulac)

† February 2015: Confounds for convergent testimony. Colloquium presentation to Department of Philosophy, University of Sheffield.

† February 2015: Two-part workshop on critical thinking education: (1) What is critical thinking, and how could everybody be teaching it if it’s so hard? (2) Intellectual virtues and social skills as critical thinking strategies. Universidade do Porto, Instituto de Filosofia, Clube Filosófico do Porto.

“Our institution has excellent supports in place to facilitate research. I aim to contribute to that system, whether that’s supporting the staff who provide those direct, frontline services, or working with faculty to determine what we can do for them so that they can focus their efforts on their research.” Dr. Michelle McGinn

Please note – Dr. Tim Kenyon has been appointed as the Interim Provost and Vice President, Academic, and Dr. Michelle McGinn is now the Acting Vice President of Research for 2024 https://brocku.ca/brock-news/2024/01/michelle-mcginn-named-acting-vice-president-research/.

The Office of the Vice President, Research is pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Michelle McGinn as Associate Vice-President, Research, effective January 1, 2020 for a period of three years.

Dr. McGinn was appointed Interim Associate Vice-President, Research in 2018. Before that, she was Associate Dean, Graduate Student Services, Research, and International in the Faculty of Education, Dr. McGinn brings to the position her expertise in higher education, particularly related to the formation and implementation of research teams that cut across subject matters and disciplines.

Her early dissertation work focused on the sociology of science, where she had the chance to interact with a range of scientists and document their work practices, which gave her an understanding of how science works. Her more recent research has focused predominantly on social science research teams and the broader research policy landscape in Ontario.

More recently, Dr. McGinn completed a Mohawk College certificate in research administration co-offered by the Canadian Association of Research Administrators (CARA). This has given her a broad appreciation of the various staffing positions and roles that support research.

Dr. Michelle McGinn holds a PhD in Education from Simon Fraser University and a certificate in Research Administration from Mohawk College. Her primary interests include research collaboration, researcher development, scholarly writing, mentorship, and ethics in academic practice for graduate students and established scholars. She is a co-investigator on the nationally funded “Academic Researchers in Challenging Times” project, where she is exploring the careers, practices, and identities of social science scholars and research administrators (see arictproject.com). Connect via Twitter @dr_mkmcginn or LinkedIn.

Recent publications:

Lokhtina, I. A., Castelló, M., Lambrechts, A. A., Löfström, E., McGinn, M. K., Skakni, I., & van der Weijden, I. C. M. (2022). The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on early career researcher activity, development, career, and well-being: The state of the art. Studies in Graduate and Postdoctoral Education, 13(3), 245–265. https://doi.org/10.1108/SGPE-10-2021-0076 [Lokhtina is project lead; other authors are listed alphabetically]

Martinovic, D., McGinn, M. K., McQuirter Scott, R., & Obradović-Ratković, S. (2022). Conceptualising generous scholarship. Journal of Perspectives in Applied Academic Practice, 10(1), 42–53. https://doi.org/10.14297/jpaap.v10i1.494[authorship shared equally]

Acker, S., & McGinn, M. K. (2021). Fast professors, research funding, and the figured worlds of mid-career Ontario academics. Brock Education, 30(2), 79–98. https://doi.org/10.26522/BrockEd.V30i2.864

Karram Stephenson, G., & McGinn, M. K. (2021). Professors in Canada: Experiences of academic life—A special issue [Guest editorial]. Brock Education, 30(2), 6–11. https://doi.org/10.26522/Brocked.V30i2.922

Wisker, G., McGinn, M. K., Bengtsen, S. S. E., Lokhtina, I., He, F., Cornér, S., Leshem, S., Inouye, K., & Löfström, E. (2021). Remote doctoral supervision experiences: Challenges and affordances. Innovations in Education and Teaching International, 58(6), 612–623. https://doi.org/10.1080/14703297.2021.1991427[Löfström is team leader; others are listed in order of contribution]

McGinn, M. K., & Niemczyk, E. K. (2020). Team dynamics and learning opportunities in social science research teams. Alberta Journal of Educational Research, 66(4), 364–386. https://doi.org/10.11575/ajer.v66i4.56459

Acker, S., McGinn, M. K., & Campisi, C. (2019). The work of university research administrators: Praxis and professionalization. Journal of Praxis in Higher Education, 1(1), 61–85. https://doi.org/10.47989/kpdc67

McGinn, M. K., Acker, S., Vander Kloet, M., & Wagner, A. (2019). Dear SSHRC, what do you want? An epistolary narrative of expertise, identity, and time in grant writing. Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 20(1). https://doi.org/10.17169/fqs-20.1.3128

McGinn, M. K., Ratković, S., Martinovic, D., & McQuirter Scott, R. (2019). Creating and sustaining a community of academic writing practice: The multi-university residential academic writing retreat model. In N. Simmons & A. Singh (Ed.), Critical collaborative communities: Academic writing partnerships, groups, and retreats (pp. 136–148). Brill/Sense.

Ratković, S., McGinn, M. K., Martinovic, D., & McQuirter Scott, R. (2019). A shared cabin in the woods: The presence and presents of writing in residential academic writing retreats. Writing and Pedagogy, 11(2), 165–194. https://doi.org/10.1558/wap.35630

Acker, S., Wagner, A., & McGinn, M. K. (2018). Research leaders and student collaborators: Insights from Canada. In L. Gornall, B. Thomas, & L. Sweetman (Eds.), Exploring consensual leadership in higher education: Co-operation, collaboration and partnership (pp. 113–128). Bloomsbury.

McGinn, M. K. (2018). Teaching and researching ethically: Guidance for instructor-researchers, educational developers, and research ethics personnel. The Canadian Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 9(1). https://doi.org/10.5206/cjsotl-­rcacea.2018.1.2

The Office of the Vice-President, Research supports Brock’s faculty from across all disciplines to explore new research and scholarship opportunities and strengthen existing ones.

This is accomplished primarily through the Office of Research Services (ORS), the roles and functions of which include:

• advising researchers on funding opportunities
• assisting with applications for research grants
• providing direction on financial management
• liaising with national granting councils and provincial agencies in the negotiation of research contracts
• promoting our researchers’ work in the media and at public events
• connecting our researchers with industrial partners and fostering those relationships

Broad reach

In addition to overseeing ORS, the Office of the Vice-President, Research is also responsible for:

• articulating the broader vision and direction of the institution’s research
• overseeing research institues and centres such as the Niagara Community Observatory and the Cool Climate Oenology and Viticulture Institute (CCOVI)
• contributing to the larger provincial and federal research environment through involvement and leadership in such initiatives as Research Matters

The bicameral system of governance of Brock University consists of two governing bodies: the Board of Trustees and the Senate.

Generally, the Senate is responsible for the educational policy of the University, and the Board of Trustees is responsible for the administrative management of the institution. The Office of the University Secretariat provides administrative services and overall support for both governing bodies. The following provides a general overview of the bicameral system of governance.

The Vice-President, Research delivers a report at the meetings, which are generally held monthly. Below are the VPR’s Senate reports from 2021 to 2018. Click here for reports given before then. (Click on the link listed in the “Meetings Agenda” column; a link to the report is found within the meeting agenda).

2024

February 14, 2024

January 17, 2024

2023

December 13, 2023

November 15, 2023

October 4, 2023

September 13, 2023

May 31, 2023 

April 19, 2023 

March 22, 2023 

February 15, 2023

January 18, 2023

2022

December 7, 2022

November 16, 2022

October 5, 2022, plus Mitacs Ontario Funding Report plus Canada Games Final Report

September 14, 2022

May 25, 2022

May 11, 2022

April 20,2022

March 15, 2022

February 9, 2022; Commercialization Mandate Policy Framework

January 19, 2022

2021

December 15, 2021

November 17, 2021

October 27, 2021

September 15, 2021

May 19, 2021

April 14, 2021

March 24, 2021

February 2, 2021

2020

December 8, 2020

November 10, 2020

October 20, 2020; Townhall Slides

September 8, 2020

May 22, 2020

April 22, 2020

March 25, 2020

March 4, 2020

February 4, 2020

January 8, 2020

2019

December 6, 2019

November 4, 2019

September 30, 2019

September 13, 2019

May 22, 2019

April 3, 2019

March 6, 2019

February 7, 2019

January 10, 2019

2018

January 17, 2018 meeting (oral update)

February 14, 2018

March 14, 2018

April 11, 2018

May 2, 2018 meeting (oral report)

May 30, 2018

September 12, 2018

October 17, 2018

November 14, 2018

December 12, 2018