This past October, the University of Waterloo was recognized as the country’s top research university for the eleventh year in a row. There are many ways to measure the success of research at Waterloo, and one of those is access to support for new research ideas.
In the Faculty of Arts, researchers developing projects have just such a funding opportunity available to them through the Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS) Endowment Fund. It was established in 2007 by a generous donation of $1 million by Waterloo alumnus Bob Harding, Chair of Brookfield Asset Management. The endowment supports both the Robert Harding Award in Humanities and Social Sciences Research and the Lois Claxton Award in Humanities and Social Sciences Research – which Harding named to honour Ms. Claxton and her term as Secretary of the University of Waterloo from 1991 to 2011.
Now exceeding $2 million, the HSS Endowment Fund offers recipients working in any field of the humanities, social sciences and creative arts the seed funding they need for new, unconventional or start-up projects, while also improving their potential for securing external grants to expand their research project and outcomes.
“This program fills an important gap in the research funding landscape.”
– Angela Roorda, Research Development Officer
Three Faculty of Arts projects recently supported by the HSS Endowment Fund highlight an emphasis on interdisciplinary, collaborative, and participatory research.
Learning through community connection
Heather Smyth, Associate Professor in English Language and Literature, is completing a project focused on stories and insights from women associated with Sistering, a multi-service agency in Toronto for homeless or precariously homed women. Smyth’s research plan included oral interviews as a powerful tool for gathering stories in the women’s own words about their experiences using the agency’s services.
Her project plan included training in community-based research for herself and two research assistants, Ashley Irwin (PhD, English) and Shama Saleh (Undergraduate, Applied Health Sciences). While the training component made it ineligible for Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) funding, the HSS Endowment was available as a solution. Smyth, Irwin and Saleh took specialized courses on conducting community-based research with vulnerable groups. In 2018, they began an initial focus group with 12 women and in-depth interviews with 43 women. Now, Smyth’s research team is creating a legacy video and publishing their findings in the form of newsletters and policy-friendly reports that the women of Sistering can use for continued advocacy on ending systemic causes of oppression.
A gallery for the Internet of Things
Jane Tingley, Assistant Professor of hybrid media in Fine Arts, is one of the creators of anyWare, an installation of three interactive sculptures that can connect three different locations anywhere in the world. Each individual sculpture links via the internet with the others: when somebody activates a light in one sculpture, the same light is activated on the other two sculptures. Through light and sound, they let people engage with others in distant locations through playful games and explorations.
The HSS Endowment Fund supported Tingley’s continued research and scaling-up of anyWare, allowing her to leverage additional funding from SSHRC, Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council. The inaugural exhibition of anyWare took place in Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal in summer 2018. Since then, Tingley’s research-creation findings have been shared in conferences and publications, contributing to a growing body of knowledge on physical game design and the Internet of the Things.
What it means to be #blackandfree
Naila Keleta-Mae, Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication Arts, knows that there has been only limited meaningful engagement with Black expressive cultures beyond scholarship on historical artifacts and artworks.
To change that, Keleta-Mae is researching, creating and distributing a pilot podcast series called Black and Free, asking how Black creators express and define what it means to be Black and free in the twenty-first century. Her three pilot podcasts will interview poet and novelist Kaie Kellough, visual artist Sandra Brewster, and writer Wendy “Motion” Brathwaite, who each create work that examines the intricacies and nuances of Black life. Stay tuned for their stories during Black History Month 2020, when Keleta-Mae will launch the podcast for the general public, creators of Black expressive culture and Black studies scholars.
Filling a gap
The HSS Endowment Fund is vital for launching these and other new projects. “This program fills an important gap in the research funding landscape,” says Angela Roorda, Arts Research Development Officer. “Not only does it provide crucial support to early career researchers, but it also stimulates innovation by enabling researchers to move in new directions that may not conform to other funding programs.”
Banner photo: visitors interact with Jane Tingley’s anyWare sculptural installation. Photo credit: Jane Tingley.
Every gift makes a difference. For information on the fundraising priorities of the Faculty of Arts, and to learn how you can make a gift, please visit Support Arts or contact Arts Advancement, artsadv@uwaterloo.ca.
