Digital cultural materials, Ontario’s rental landscape and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals are among the topics to be explored by U of G researchers with new funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC). 

The funding is part of $149.7 million announced today to support more than 600 projects nationwide through SSHRC. 

In total, U of G researchers will receive almost $1.9 million in new Partnership Development and Insight grants from the federal agency. 


Partnership Development Grants 

Dr. Susan Brown, School of English and Theatre Studies

Dr. Susan Brown leans against a grey pillar.

Brown will receive $199,952 over three years to facilitate Forward Linking, a pilot project to transform how cultural materials are shared online. 

Galleries, libraries, archives and museums collect many digital cultural resources, such as digitized manuscripts, oral history archives, virtual reality experiences, digital art collections and learning tools. However, these materials are stored on websites that are often isolated from each other and from scholarly contexts. 

Under the Forward Linking partnership, experts in culture and heritage, digital scholarship and information science will explore ways of interlinking digital cultural resources across organizations sustainably and equitably. The project will make it easier for people to find, use and benefit from the information. 


Insight Grants 

Nine scholars in three colleges will receive almost $1.7 million in SSHRC Insight funding for two- to five-year grants. 

College of Arts 

Dr. Susan Brown leans against a grey pillar.

Dr. Susan Brown

School of English and Theatre Studies

Brown and her collaborators will experiment with weaving data and narrative together to communicate new insights into the lives and literature of 19th-century women writers in the British Isles, drawing from U of G’s Orlando Project, a digital literary resource.


College of Social and Applied Human Sciences 

a tightly cropped photo of Dr. Patrick Barclay

Dr. Patrick Barclay

Department of Psychology

Barclay will investigate how cooperation is influenced by potential collaborators’ reputations and their conscious or unconscious signals of willingness.

Dr. Mervyn Horgan

Department of Sociology and Anthropology

Horgan will lead Canadian and international housing researchers in studying effects of Canada’s rapidly changing rental market on tenants across Ontario’s Greater Golden Horseshoe.

Dr. Edward Koning

Dr. Edward Koning

Department of Political Science

Koning will investigate the social rights of immigrants by expanding his existing database that documents their access to social programs and services in 22 countries.

Dr. David MacDonald on a patio

Dr. David MacDonald

Department of Political Science

MacDonald will document and compare how Indigenous political actors in Canada and other countries are advancing self-determination over their peoples, lands and water. His co-investigator is Dr. Sheryl Lightfoot from the University of British Columbia.

Dr. Dave Snow

Department of Political Science

Snow will examine when and why the Supreme Court of Canada has allowed governments to limit the rights set out in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.


Gordon S. Lang School of Business and Economics 

Prof. Felix Arndt

Dr. Felix Arndt

Department of Management and John F. Wood Chair in Entrepreneurship

Arndt will examine how individual commitments to cross-sector partnerships can lead to effective collaboration among business, government and civil society.

Dr. Philippe Lassou

Department of Management

Lassou will investigate progress toward the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in Benin, Ghana, Mauritius and Tanzania with colleagues from the University of Essex and the University of Sheffield. 

Dr. Xiaowen Lei

Department of Economics and Finance

Lei will explore how differences in beliefs affect income and wealth inequality.