Laurier researchers awarded nearly $4.8 million in new federal research funding

June 16, 2021

The federal government announced nearly $4.8 million in new grant funding for Wilfrid Laurier University researchers. Seventeen Laurier faculty members working in a broad range of areas, including religion and culture, business technology management and chemistry, received funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC).

The Honourable François-Philippe Champagne, Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry, made the funding announcement on June 15 at a livestreamed event.

“We are proud to continue investing in, and celebrating, the creativity and innovation that are at the heart of Canada’s research ecosystem,” says Champagne. “It is inspiring to see the ingenuity and dedication Canadian researchers embrace in exploring big ideas that will fuel the discoveries and innovations of tomorrow to make our world a better place and create prosperity for Canadians.”

Among the Laurier recipients is Professor Jonathan Crush, who was awarded a seven-year, $2.5-million SSHRC Partnership Grant for a collaborative international project called MiFood.

Migration within the Global South now exceeds movement from North to South, and migrants and their dependents make up a significant proportion of the estimated two billion people globally who are moderately or severely food insecure. Crush and his partners aim to determine whether migration is a response to food insecurity, whether migration leads to better food security for migrant populations, and if not, what evidence-based interventions might help mitigate migrant food insecurity. 

MiFood will be implemented by the Hungry Cities Partnership at the Balsillie School of International Affairs, an international network of cities and organizations which focuses on building sustainable cities and urban food systems in the Global South. As director of the partnership, Crush collaborates with twelve countries across the Global South including South Africa, China, Ecuador, Ghana and India, as well as several international organizations including the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization, International Labour Organization, International Organization for Migration and the International Food Policy Research Institute.  

The wide range of successful Laurier researchers and partnerships, listed below, exemplifies the interdisciplinary strengths and community collaboration within the university’s research program.

SSHRC Funding

Partnership Grants

• Jonathan Crush, professor, Geography and Environmental Studies
  South-South Migration and Migrant Food Insecurity: Interactions, Impacts and Remedies (MiFood Project)

Partnership Development Grants

• Steve Sider, associate professor, Education
  Supporting Inclusive Education in Haiti: Developing a Canada-Haiti Partnership for Research and Teacher Education on Disability and Inclusion
• Patrick Watson, assistant professor, Criminology
  Charting the “Reasonable Officer”: A Partnership with Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit to Understand Oversight in Police Use-of-Force Cases

Insight Grants

• Abderrahman Beggar, professor, Religion and Culture
  Life in Unintended Destinations: Stories of Sub-Saharan African Migrants in Morocco and Mexico
• Barry Colbert, associate professor, Policy
  Catalyzing and Managing Sustainability Transitions: Examining and Developing Systemic Intermediaries for Social-Ecological Innovation
• Judy Eaton, associate professor, Psychology
  Social judgment toward victims who forgive severe offences
• Mindi Foster, associate professor, Psychology
  Is women's social media activism mobilizing or silencing? Testing a social identity theory perspective
• Oliver Masakure, associate professor, Business Technology Management
  Paths Less Traveled: Experiences of Young African Immigrant Entrepreneurs
• Alison Mountz, professor, Geography and Environmental Studies
  Asylum's Afterlives: Reshaping Protection, from Island Detention to Resettlement in North America
• Juanne Nancarrow Clarke, professor, Sociology
  Syrian Refugees: Gender Based Analysis and ADAPTation
• Jason Neelis, associate professor, Religion and Culture
  Epigraphic and petroglyphic complexes of the Upper Indus: Digital preservation and promotion of written and visual cultures
• Chris Nighman, professor, History
  The Digital Auctores Project
• Andrew Spring, associate director, Laurier Centre for Sustainable Food Systems
  Voicing Change: Co-creating Knowledge and Capacity for Sustainable Food Systems
• Fang Wang, professor, Marketing
  A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words: Deciphering Image Features for Effective Visual Communication

NSERC Funding 

Discovery Grants

• Ian Hamilton, professor, Chemistry and Biochemistry
  Metal Clusters, Metal Nanostructures, Semiconductor Nanocrystals, Single-Ion Magnets
• Chunming (Victor) Shi, associate professor, Operations and Decision Sciences
  Enhancing Supply Chain Resilience Using Strategic Inventories and Partial Vertical Integration
• Evgueni (Eugene) Zima, associate professor, Computer Science
  Efficient Algorithms and Succinct Data Structures for Acceleration of Telescoping and Related Problems