SSHRC-funded scholars win high-profile research awards

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A number of Canadian academics whose research was funded by SSHRC have recently received high-profile awards for their transformative scholarship.

SSHRC would like to recognize Marie-Odile Junker, a linguistics professor at Carleton University, for receiving a Governor General’s Innovation Award. She was honoured for her pioneering research exploring how information technologies can be used to preserve endangered Indigenous languages.

Junker has received many SSHRC grants to support her research, including funding for the Algonquian Linguistic Atlas, an online, interactive map to help document, revitalize and teach Indigenous languages. She also partnered with Marguerite MacKenzie, professor emerita at Memorial University and the 2013 SSHRC Insight Award winner, to develop Innu-aimun.ca, a multilingual website offering language resources for the Innu language spoken in Quebec and Labrador.

SSHRC also congratulates the following SSHRC-funded researchers for winning prestigious awards.

• Charlotte Loppie, director of the University of Victoria’s Centre for Indigenous Research and Community-Led Engagement, took home the CIHR Gold Leaf Prize in the Transformation category. Loppie was recognized for her outstanding leadership in patient engagement, and for her continued dedication to bringing Indigenous peoples into research projects that affect their lives.
• Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Law John Borrows received the Killam Prize in Social Sciences for his extensive research on, and support of, incorporating Indigenous legal concepts into the practice of Canadian law. Borrows is Anishinabe/Ojibway and a member of the Chippewa of the Nawash First Nation in Ontario.
• The University of Toronto’s Thomas Hurka won the Killam Prize in Humanities for his significant contributions to moral and political philosophy. Much of his research and teaching focuses on normative ethical theory and asking the question “What makes a good life?”

In addition, Eric Helleiner from the University of Waterloo and Dominic McIver Lopes from The University of British Columbia were awarded 2017 Killam Research Fellowships to support their groundbreaking research projects in political economy and aesthetics, respectively.

Read an article in University Affairs to learn more.