Researchers in the Faculties of Arts, Science and Business Administration and School of Music have earned a combined $1,350,552 from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC).

“Social science research is integral to our knowledge and understanding of people, societies and the world around us,” said Dr. Richard Marceau, vice-president (research). “I commend our researchers for their success in this highly competitive funding program and look forward to learning more about the fruits of their research as they carry out their research programs.”

The research will investigate a variety of topics including fostering recall in children, transformational leadership style and marital violence in Ghana.

One project that received more than $400,000 over four years, Through Veterans' Eyes: Digital Approaches to the Hidden Histories of Veterans, Families, and the State in Canada, 1918-2000, is led by Dr. Mark Humphries in the Department of History. The project is also supported by Memorial University and Wilfrid Laurier University.

Dr. Humphries and co-investigators Cynthia Comacchio and Terry Copp, Wilfrid Laurier University, are using a newly available series of Canadian First World War veterans pension files to investigate the type of problems Canadian veterans and their families faced when soldiers returned home from the Great War and how the veterans’ experience changed over time. More broadly, they will explore how the experience of war shaped the lives of Canadian veterans and their families.

 “The files that we are using are unique in that they document the lives of individual veterans and their families in minute detail from the end of service to death, containing health records, income reports, home visit reports, letters, testimonials, and interview transcripts,” Dr. Humphries explained. “The funding from SSHRC will allow us to recruit and train nearly 25 graduate students over the next five years, to purchase the necessary digitization equipment, and to conduct the travel necessary to use the records in Ottawa and Charlottetown, PEI. In the end we hope to house the archive here at Memorial which will support future research and student training for years to come.”

Dr. Humphries received funding under the Insight Awards program, which aims to support and foster excellence in social sciences and humanities research intended to deepen, widen and increase our collective understanding of individuals and societies, as well as to inform the search for solutions to societal challenges. Other Memorial-led projects that received funding include:

• Dr. Kara Arnold, Faculty of Business Administration, Transformational Leadership Style and Leader Stress: A Multi-source Multi-method Analysis, $153,856
• Dr. Julie Brittain, Department of Linguistics, Faculty of Arts, From Signal to Grammar in Cree: Breaking Through Grammatical Opacity in First Language Acquisition, $480,812
• Dr. Mark Humphries, Department of History, Faculty of Arts, Through Veterans' Eyes: Digital Approaches to the Hidden Histories of Veterans, Families, and the State in Canada, 1918-2000, $400,516
• Dr. Carole Peterson, Department of Psychology, Faculty of Science, Fostering Open-ended Recall in Young Children, $126,549
• Dr. Kristin Harris-Walsh, School of Music, Dancing Across the Diaspora: Style, Context and Practice of Three Canadian Step Dance Styles, $70,936
• Dr. Sara Mackenzie, Department of Linguistics, Faculty of Arts, Allophony in Newfoundland English: Production, Perception, and Variation, $46,480
• Dr. Eric Tenkorang, Department of Sociology, Faculty of Arts, Marital Violence Against Women in Ghana: Causes and Implications, $71,305