Arts scholars elected to Royal Society of Canada’s College

Igor Grossmann is a psychology professor and director of the Wisdom and Culture Lab at Waterloo, which aims to demystify wisdom, and shift the paradigm by studying and modelling change in cultural and psychological processes. Grossmann is also the host of the On Wisdom podcast, as a social and cognitive scientist diving into conversations on wisdom, decision-making, well-being and society, while including regular guest speakers who are leading behaviour scientists. 

Grossmann’s current research is on wise judgement and modelling societal change. He also founded the Forecasting Collaborative — an international collaboration between researchers wanting to get a better picture on opportunities and challenges of expert judgement in social sciences, while using big team science to scrutinize the way social scientists make predictions. His interdisciplinary research draws from anthropology, behavioural ecology, computational sciences, economics, philosophy and psychology.  

Naila Keleta-Mae is a Dorothy Killam fellow and a Tier 2 Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Canada Research Chair in Race, Gender and Performance. Keleta-Mae is also a visionary researcher and principal investigator of the Black And Free research-creation project, which explores Black expressive culture through various mediums and engages with the public through a series of events, classes and exhibits that showcase Ontario-based Black artists. 

As the principal investigator of the Black and Free, Keleta-Mae currently leads multi-year research partnerships with Citizen Brand, Ken Seiling Waterloo Region Museum, NOR: The design commons for Canada, Studio Otherness, TheEDGE, THEMUSEUM, Wilfred Laurier University Press and the Young People’s Theatre.  In 2022, Keleta-Mae was the recipient of Waterloo’s Arts Award for Excellence in Research. Her main research and artistic contributions have been particularly notable in two related fields: Black Expressive Culture and Black Feminisms. 

Nicole Nolette is a Tier 2 SSHRC Canada Research Chair in Minority Studies and a specialist of theatre produced by Canada’s francophone communities. As a professor in French Studies, her current research is at the crossroads of Translation Studies, theatre studies and Franco-Canadian literature.

Nolette is the president of the Société Québécoise d’études théâtrales, a Québec-based association dedicated to the study of performance and theatre. She is also Co-General Director of Staging Better Futures/Mettre en scène de meilleurs avenirs, the first national, cross-sectoral partnership approach to decolonizing, anti-racist, equitable, diverse and inclusive systemic change ever undertaken in post-secondary theatre education in Canada, which has just been awarded a $2.5-million SSHRC Partnership Grant.