U of A social sciences and humanities research takes home the bacon
Written By: Chris Smith
2005-07-18
; "Dr. Rick Szostak")
University of Alberta researchers doing work in the social sciences and humanities have recently been awarded $3 million - but the true value of this funding to passionate researchers may be difficult to pin-point.The funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) announced in June, will allot $3 million in grant money to 37 research projects. The money will provide employment for graduate students, allow for the creation of many new projects and support long-term work in progress.
The projects explore a wide range of topics including science centre programs for Canadian schools, feasting, fasting and food in early Christianity, female enterprise in Canada and the psychosocial factors influencing children's sport experience.
For Dr. Christine Wiesenthal in the Department of English and Film Studies, the funding is integral to finishing larger projects.
"It wouldn't be possible to do this project without support from SSHRC, because I have none of the equipment that's necessary for it," said Wiesenthal, whose SSHRC grant will help her complete a book to be published in the fall.
The research is compiling years of research into a biography of a little-known murdered Canadian poet entitled The Half Lives of Pat Lowther.
"She's a writer whose work and contributions to intellectual, political, and literary life of the 1970s has been overshadowed by this horrible, brutal end," Wiesenthal explained.
"Her death has crowded out our appreciation of her life and her work."
The SSHRC funding will allow Wiesenthal to create a new and more accurate anthology of Lowther's work, and build a web-based public archive for material that couldn't be included in the anthology.
"Electronic resources expand the parameters of the book," she said, adding that the digital archive reflects Lowther's character.
"In many ways, she was ahead of her time. She was really deeply interested in science, and this is where I think she's very current for today's reader. She's fascinated by communications technologies, which is another reason why a digital archive in her case makes perfect sense."
Another SSHRC recipient, Dr. Rick Szostak, is closely examining the ways academic researchers do their work.
The professor of economics at the U of A is interested in keeping track of what scholars are up to, and how they do their research.
"I've developed a classification for the ways scientists study, and some thoughts on how the phenomena studied in the natural sciences could be classified, as well as classifications of the types of theories and the methods that scholars use; key strengths and weaknesses of these, classification of the types of errors and biases that can sneak into scholarly research," he said.
Szostak believes this "mapping" of research methods is an important step in the critical examination of scholarly work. Ultimately, he feels that this critical analysis could change the way scientific research is catalogued.
"Right now it's hard for researchers to search by the type of theory that was used, or the type of method that was used, the library type of classification system we have are geared toward public users," he said.
"One of the things that my approach potentially allows is a classification of documents where a scholar who wants to use this theory and this method to look at this phenomena, can immediately find out who else has already done it."
Original: ExpressNews