Impact Awards—2025 Gold medal winner: Myriam Denov

As a young scholar, Myriam Denov’s research trajectory was sparked by seeing unsettling images in the media of children holding weapons.

“I was really disturbed by the images,” Denov remembers. “But I also wondered, how did they come to hold that gun? What happened to that child? Where is that child now? That was the first impetus of me looking at the long-term impacts of being a child soldier.”

Now a professor at McGill University’s School of Social Work and a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Children, Families, and Armed Conflict, Denov has worked with war-affected children in Asia, Africa and the Americas for the last 25 years.

For highlighting hidden wartime experiences and promoting action and change, Denov is the winner of the 2025 SSHRC Impact Awards Gold Medal.

“I’m still wrapping my head around it. This award means everything to me. It’s not just a recognition of my work, but also of the importance of research on children and families affected by war,” she says.

When Denov started this research in the early 2000s, she wanted to understand how children became implicated in violence, and how former child soldiers fared in the aftermath of war. She tried speaking to young people in Sierra Leone about how they were brought into armed groups and what happened when they returned to their communities afterwards; but it was a difficult time and place for such research.

“In postconflict Sierra Leone, there was a lot of suspicion and fear. Young people were afraid of community members learning they had been affiliated with an armed group. It puts a target on you,” Denov says.

She realized child soldiers were much more willing to speak with peers who had been through the same experiences as them, so she invited young people in the community to join her research team. Most have little in the way of formal education, but she trains and mentors them to conduct interviews, lead focus groups and do data analysis.

“I have so much to learn from them and they have so much to contribute to the research process,” she says. “Some have gone on to start small businesses, attend university and co-author journal articles and book chapters. It’s been really amazing to see.”

Denov sees her role as an intermediary, between war-affected children and the adults they interact with—from community members to policy- and decision-makers. She has presented expert evidence in court on child soldiers and has advised government and nongovernmental organizations. She also communicates with social workers and health practitioners about how to best support war-affected children.

“I try to get their voices heard, and then have action come from that. It’s not always easy. It’s an ongoing challenge,” she says.

Postconflict, Denov says children often talk about wanting to access school, reintegrate into their communities and not be treated as second-class citizens. An innovative way that she brings attention to their experiences is by showing art the children have made, depicting their lives both during wartime and in the aftermath. This has value at the local level, where community members may not know what children have been through, or are still processing it.

“Children’s art has a very strong impact, far beyond words. Art is accessible, powerful, and community members can easily capture its meaning,” she explains.

Denov says, “I feel so very fortunate and grateful to do the work that I do, because I get to work with these incredible, courageous and inspiring young people who have been through such challenges and, yet, have come through the other side. It’s never an easy or quick road, but I’m very fortunate to be able to work with them and to learn from them.”