Five UWindsor faculty members have been awarded more than $539,000 in federal funding to advance research and research-creation in the arts, humanities, and social sciences.

This funding was awarded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council through its most competitive funding opportunity, the Insight Grant program.

UWindsor exceeded the national success rate for the 2020 Insight Grant competition, with 45.5 per cent of all applications receiving funding. These monies will enable UWindsor researchers to provide meaningful research assistantships to students and enrich understanding of what we think, how we live, and how we interact with each other and the world.

Two Insight Grants were awarded to faculty in the School of Creative Arts.

Lee Rodney’s research-creation project will invite residents of three Ontario communities to create new maps of their regions, maps that override the official “Canadian” and “American” borders by locating the Indigenous, black, and other communities that cross them.

Sally Bick will produce an interactive digital map of the entanglements of events, publications, and recordings produced by musicians, concert organizers, critics, and educators who were part of the musical modernism movement in 1930s New York — many of whom have been lost to history because of their unpopular political views during the Cold War.

During one of two research projects funded in the Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Criminology, Greg Feldman will work closely with Vancouver’s community of Congolese refugees to explore why and how this community engages governmental officials, workers in non-governmental organizations, and sister communities in Canada and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Nick Harney will compare how strangers are welcomed across three different communities in Italy, encouraging policymakers, civil servants and NGO workers to reconsider their policies, actions, and attitudes toward the processes of migration and citizenship.

In addition, Todd Loughead of kinesiology will deliver and evaluate two longitudinal online leadership development programs for student-athletes. Results will be helpful for coaches and coaching associations which currently have few resources for developing leadership in their athletes.

“I am very pleased by the success our researchers have enjoyed this year, and I would like to thank SSHRC for their generous support,” said K.W. Michael Siu, UWindsor vice-president, research and innovation. “Thank you also to the research administrators in the faculties and in the Office of Research and Innovation Services who work closely with the faculty on developing their applications.”

A record number of UWindsor faculty served on Insight Grant adjudication committees in 2020.

“We are grateful to the faculty who took time from their demanding teaching and research schedules to participate along with other national experts in and contribute to assessment of the applications,” said Dr. Siu. “We thank you for your contributions to the research community and acknowledge the benefits from the experience that you bring back to us.”