In the 2023/24 academic year, SPPGA faculty secured $18.2 million in new funding, through 30+ competitive funds.
- Building on her work in health communications, Prof. Heidi Tworek joined the health communications stream of The Pacific Institute on Pathogens, Pandemics and Society at SFU, and her group succeeded in securing a $13.5 million grant on providing social science perspectives into vaccine development and deployment.
- As co-lead of the Disaster Resilience Research Network, Prof. Sara Shneiderman helped secure a $450,000 research contract with the BC Ministry of Emergency Management and Climate Readiness (EMCR) in 2023. As a part of this partnership, Sara co-organized a knowledge exchange workshop involving participants from provincial and municipal governments, as well as industry and civil society organizations involved in disaster risk reduction. She has also been invited to join the Governance Working Group for the ongoing Disaster and Climate Risk and Resilience Assessment, which will guide provincial policy in this critical issue over the next several decades.
- Prof. Erin Baines received a SSHRC Partnership Grant of $2.3 million, plus $2.8 million in matching funds for the Transformative Memory International Network, which she co-leads with Pilar Riaño-Alcalá. The grant will contribute to re-thinking how memory is conceptualized in the fields of transitional justice and memory studies. In addition to setting new research agendas, the group is set to impact policy by reimagining, for example, the shape of archives, museums, exhibits, days of commemoration, truth commissions and transitional justice policies outside Western-centric frameworks. Prof. Sheryl Lightfoot, Prof. Heidi Tworek, Prof. Yves Tiberghien, Prof. Chris Tenove and Prof. M.V. Ramana also received funding through the SSHRC.
- Prof. Juliet Lu raised $28,000 to host a 60-person multi-day conference titled “Navigating Global China” that brought together experts from academia, civil society, government and the private sector to explore ways of engaging with China in order to grapple with collective challenges—from the climate crisis to public health vulnerabilities. It featured roundtables, panel talks, strategizing sessions and an opening key-note address by Robert Daly (Director, Kissinger Institute on China and the US) and was presented with the Centre for Chinese Research in partnership with the Asia Pacific Foundation.
- Prof. Timothy Cheek was awarded an SSHRC Partnership Development Grant for the project “Revisiting the Revolution: Engaging Chinese Scholarship through Collaborative Translation” which focuses on translating contemporary Chinese scholarship on modern revolutions to deepen understanding of Chinese Communist Party history and revolution-era experiences.
