Four new research centres in the Faculty of Public Affairs will focus expertise and resources on a range of complex and important issues.
The proposed Centre for Poverty and Social Justice, expected to launch next fall, will be based at the School of Social Work. The school’s director, Hugh Shewell, says the centre would coordinate theoretical research and organize conferences that will spur debate. He also hopes it will attract applicants to the school’s proposed doctoral program.
“For potential PhD students to come to a school that also offers a centre for studies in issues around poverty and social justice…is quite a strong draw, I think,” he says. “It could position Carleton uniquely.”
The second “new” centre isn’t really new. The Research Resource Division for Refugees, also at the School of Social Work, was founded in 1985. Last February, it was relaunched as the Centre for International Migration and Settlement Studies (CIMSS).
The new name better reflects the scope of the centre’s activities, says Adnan Türegün, executive director of CIMSS. As well as researching issues that affect immigrants and refugees, and developing a training program for settlement workers, CIMSS publishes INSCAN, an influential journal in the settlement field, and Integration-Net, a national bilingual website.
The third “new” body, the Canadian Initiative in Law, Culture and Humanities (CILCH ), was founded in 2005 but recently received research centre status. Based in the Department of Law, it brings together diverse experts to explore shared research interests through conferences, symposia and research projects.
A law professor writing about the legal aspects of the Harry Potter novels, for instance, might find as much in common with an English professor than with a lawyer, explains Sheryl Hamilton, the Canada Research Chair in Communication, Law and Governance and one of CILCH’s founders. “When you bring all these people together, interesting things happen.”
The fourth research unit is the Centre for Media and Transitional Societies (CMTS), based in the School of Journalism and Communications and directed by journalism professor Allan Thompson. Launched in December 2009, it builds on the work of the Rwanda Initiative, a partnership between the school and its counterpart at the National University of Rwanda to rebuild the news media sector in that country. The CMTS will promote research on the role of the media in transitional societies emerging from conflict, changes in the political landscape or other cataclysmic events. It also plans to engage in project work to implement some of this knowledge.