Research Grants and Awards

James Milner
2025-2031 SSHRC Partnership Grant
2022 Gerda Henkel Foundation Grant

2025-2031 SSHRC Partnership Grant
“Reimagining responses to forced migration through the Local Engagement Refugee Research Network (LERRN)”

The focus of the project is to address the complex and pressing global challenge of forced migration. The scale and complexity of forced migration is growing, yet the international community is unable to effectively respond to the challenge. New approaches are needed, especially in the global South where 76% of the world’s forced migrants are now found. The project is founded on a shared belief in the need to transform our approach to forced migration research by amplifying the agency of those most affected by displacement and by adopting a deeply inclusive, interdisciplinary, collaborative and localized approach to the co-production of knowledge. The goal of the partnership is for the knowledge and expertise of those most affected by displacement to more reliably and substantively inform forced migration research and the global refugee regime, leading to more effective, legitimate and accountable research, policy and practice. The project will focus on four strategies: Ensuring the meaningful participation of forced migrants as equal partners; investing in collaborative, partnered research with those most affected by displacement; amplifying the agency of traditionally marginalized actors through training and mentoring activities; and reimagining knowledge translation and mobilization to realize change in policy and practice. The project aims to mobilize a global partnership that embraces a wide range of perspectives, generates new forms of knowledge and unites diverse actors in designing and promoting transformative, yet practical, responses to forced migration.

2022 Gerda Henkel Foundation Grant to support a comparative study on the politics and process of refugee leadership in the global South, with a specific focus on Latin America and East Africa.

This research is a collaboration between R-SEAT (Refugees Seeking Equal Access at the Table) and LERRN (the Local Engagement Refugee Research Network), with the active cooperation of the RLRH(Refugee-led Research Hub) in East Africa and CAPRS (the Centre for Asia Pacific Refugee Studies) in the Asia Pacific region. The project builds on LERRN’s recent work with its partners on the impact of refugee-led organizations in East Africa and the Middle East, and seeks to inform research, policy and practice on the conditions that enable or constrain refugees from demonstrating leadership in navigating local, national and regional power structures to influence the development and implementation of policy and programmes intended to affect the daily lives of refugees. This 18-month project will emphasize the active and equal participation of researchers with lived experience of displacement in developing the research methodology, conducting research, producing knowledge, and mobilizing knowledge to influence research, policy and practice.

Peter Andrée
2024-2027 SSHRC Partnership Development Grant

2024-2027 SSHRC Partnership Development Grant
“Living Relationships: Stories of Decolonizing Food System Transitions in Aotearoa and Canada”

The dominant food system is responsible for a third of global greenhouse gas emissions and is the primary cause of biodiversity loss. Food and agriculture have also long served as agents of settler-colonialism. This partnership research and knowledge mobilization project will gather and share stories of innovative ways of working together between Indigenous and settler partners responding to these challenges in Aotearoa (New Zealand) and Canada.

The Living Relationships project brings together a diverse team of partner organizations and Nations (including Plenty Canada, the Ngai Tahu Centre, the First Nation of Na Cho Nyuk Dun, the Teme-Augama Anishinaabe and First Nations Technical Institute), Indigenous expert advisors and academic researchers with deep experience in sustainable agriculture, fisheries and food systems, law and governance, environmental protection, and Indigenous food sovereignty. It will be hosted by the Carleton Centre for Community Innovation (3ci) and co-directed by Prof. Peter Andrée (Political Science, Carleton) and Dr. John Reid (Ngai Tahu Centre, University of Canterbury). Dr. Gabriel Maracle (Political Science, Carleton) will also serve on the project’s Research Circle.

Cati Coe
2024-2027 SSHRC funded Open Research Area 8 (ORA 8) Award
2024-25 Carleton University Research Development Grant

2024-2027 SSHRC funded Open Research Area 8 (ORA 8) Award
“Pathways for Vocational Training and Informal Learning in West Africa”

Cati Coe has been awarded a major research award as a member of a multinational team of researchers under Open Research Area 8 (ORA 8) initiative coordinated by SSHRC in collaboration with the Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR, France), the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, Germany), and the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC, UK).

The project will explore the value attributed to technical and vocational education and training (TVET) in West Africa, with a particular focus on the continued dominance of traditional apprenticeships in the region, despite reforms since the 1990s aimed at formalising vocational education. The study will follow young people across socio-economic backgrounds in small cities in Benin, Côte d’Ivoire, and Ghana to understand how young women and men acquire technical skills in both formal and informal settings. With a youth-centred and feminist relational approach, the research will be collaborative, involving nine researchers and twelve youths who will actively contribute to content creation about their experiences with TVET. Along with Dr Akosua Keseboa Darkwah (University of Ghana), Cati will be leading the research on TVET in Ghana.

2024-25 Carleton University Research Development Grant:
“Transnational Social Protection and the Care of Aging Migrants”

Despite the general success of the Canadian social welfare system in reducing poverty among seniors, since 2000, scholars have sounded the alarm about how new Canadians are disadvantaged when it comes to retirement. The causes of poverty among aging immigrants are clear; this study examines the impacts of current pension policy, with a focus on Ghanaian-Canadians.  Impoverishment may lead immigrant seniors to diversify their social protection resources, relying on family, continued work, and transnational residence and connections to supplement inadequate state resources. How do aging seniors negotiate dilemmas in social protection and how do their solutions to these dilemmas affect their sense of political belonging?

Isaac Odoom
2025 Insight Development Grant
2024-25 Carleton University Research Development Grant

2025 Insight Development Grant
“Digital transformation and geopolitics: Balancing development, agency, and global actors in Ghana”

The project focuses on the geopolitics of technology and its impact in Africa. It looks at how major global powers, including China, the United States, and the European Union, are engaging in Ghana’s digital infrastructure and human capital. It also explores how Ghanaian policymakers, institutions, businesses, and civil society are responding to these changes. Instead of seeing this only as great power rivalry, the project focuses on Ghana’s choices and strategies in shaping its digital future. The findings will help us better understand Africa’s role in the digital age and offer lessons for policymakers and development actors.

2024-25 Carleton University Research Development Grant:
“China’s Digital Silk Road and Geopolitics in Ghana’s Digital Frontier”

This project investigates the impact of Chinese digital investments in Ghana within the context of intensifying geopolitical competition involving the US and EU. As Africa experiences rapid digital transformation, partly driven by foreign tech investments, China’s role has become increasingly pivotal. Focusing on Ghana—a leading democracy in Africa—this study examines how Chinese digital initiatives in infrastructure, governance, and digital entrepreneurship are shaping the country’s digital economy.

The research critically assesses the extent and implications of Chinese tech investments in Ghana, alongside the strategic responses from the US and EU. It explores how Ghanaian actors navigate these digital partnerships amidst global rivalries. By shifting the narrative from geopolitical rivalry to the active agency of African stakeholders, this study contributes to the literature by highlighting the local responses and their implications for technology transfer, human capital development, and governance.

Gopika Solanki 
2025 SSHRC Partnership Engage Grant
2024-25 Carleton University Research Development Grant

2025 SSHRC Partnership Engage Grant

The research project titled “Counting on Adivasi women leaders: How electoral quotas shape ecological governance in Maharashtra, India” aims to generate insights on Adivasi women’s localized leadership. It is a designed in partnership with the Resource and Support Centre for Development (RSCD), a Mumbai-based organization that provides training and support to women leaders elected through gender quotas in 1,000 villages in Western India.

2024-25 Carleton University Research Development Grant:
“Negotiating Difference in Relational Spaces: Ethnicity, Gender, and Interreligious Marriage in India”

Multi-ethnic and multi-religious postcolonial societies witness ongoing contestations over the regulation of inter-religious love and marriage since these threaten exclusionary and hyper-nationalist ethnopolitical orders. Using spatial lenses, the proposed research aims to advance a theoretical understanding of the politics of everyday navigation of difference by examining interreligious marriage and romance in public and private spaces. Using ethnography, this study seeks to identify how interreligious intimacies affect the construction, maintenance, and navigation of sexual, gender, kinship, ethnic, political, and religious identities over time, and generate recommendations to construct inclusive social spaces and foster interethnic ties.

William Walters
2024 SSHRC Insight Grant

2024 SSHRC Insight Grant
“Rethinking Declassification: Dis/closure, Infrastructure, Aesthetics”

Christina Gabriel
2024 Carleton University Research Achievement Award

2024 Carleton University Research Achievement Award:
“The Care Crisis and International Student Mobility”

This project focuses on how immigration policy is deployed to address health worker shortages. Specifically, it examines how international nursing students negotiate the intersection between the terms of their entry to Canada as students on a study permit and their transition to the health labour force through mechanisms such as the post-graduate work permit. In doing so the project will identify systemic barriers migrants encounter in the labour market and evaluate available policy options.

Jeff Sahadeo
2024 Carleton International- International Research Seed Grant

2024 Carleton International- International Research Seed Grant:
“Rivers and the Environment in the Republic of Georgia: Activism and the Everyday”

Rivers act as connective tissue, linking water to land, lakes to seas, marine life to shore life.  The Republic of Georgia’s 26 000 rivers are central to economic and everyday life, power relationships and local, regional and national identities.  This project will investigate critical aspects of Georgian rivers, combining natural and human worlds.  A broad interdisciplinary team from Carleton University and Ilia State University in Tbilisi, Georgia, will integrate scientific and community knowledge into environmental humanities and social sciences research.  Jeff Sahadeo and Ketevan Gurchiani (director, Center for Anthropology Research, Ilia State University) will lead a team to conduct multivector work at two field sites:  Dighomi Meadows, the last remaining floodplain in the capital, Tbilisi; and the Rioni River, where sturgeon, on the brink of global extinction, still spawn.

Erin Tolley
2024-2025 Carleton University SSHRC Exchange Grant: Knowledge Mobilization
2022-2028 SSHRC Insight Grant

2024-2025 Carleton University SSHRC Exchange Grant: Knowledge Mobilization

This funding will support Dr. Tolley’s SSHRC-funded research with Operation Black Vote Canada, which examines Black Canadians’ experiences in electoral politics. Together, they have conducted the first-ever survey of Black Canadians in politics and interviewed more than 30 Black Canadian candidates and officeholders. They are now producing a report and four-episode podcast, called Black on the Ballot, to share their findings. Funds from this Exchange Grant will support this innovative knowledge mobilization and increase the public impact of their work.

2022-2028 SSHRC Insight Grant
“Improving the Collection of Racial Data in Research on Politics”

This multi-method project examines how questions, classifications, and survey design influence what we know about race and political behaviour in Canada. Through an inventory of existing research practices, a novel survey experiment, and a series of focus groups, we are: documenting how race has been conceptualized, operationalized, and measured; investigating how research design influences data collection, quality, and responses; and understanding how racialized Canadians interpret survey questions about race. Our findings will generate recommendations for the collection of high-quality, reliable, and disaggregated data on race in research and policymaking in Canada.

2024 SSHRC Partnership Engage Grant

2024 SSHRC Partnership Engage Grant
“Leveraging Canadian Expertise for Enhancing Kazakhstan’s Management of Migration”

This project examines how Kazakhstan is transforming into a major migration gateway in the context of Russia’s war on Ukraine, the exodus of thousands of Russians, the recent adoption of a visa-free corridor between China and Kazakhstan, as well as the redirection of regional worker and student flows, turning it from a country of traditional emigration into a transit gateway and new country of immigration.

Dr. Geiger’s one year project will support WPK, a leading immigration consultancy in Kazakhstan, in its efforts to advance the country’s management of migration. The project involves former IRCC Director General Corinne Prince, the CEO of the Immigrant Employment Council of British Columbia (Patrick Mackenzie), and Ottawa-based immigration lawyer Ronalee Carey (Carey Law).

Laura Macdonald
2018-2025 SSHRC Insight Grant

2018-2025 SSHRC Insight Grant:
“Transnational Civil Society Linkages in North America”

This research project examines the nature of transnational cooperation between civil society actors in Canada, the United States and Mexico. Researchers will analyze diverse forms of cross-border cooperation and conflict around three themes: labour rights, migration, and human rights, in order to understand how transnational cooperation has evolved over time, and how transnationalism differs across issue areas. This research on the North American case will yield insights that will illuminate the nature of transnationalism in the contemporary global economy and contribute to public debate about the future of the region.

Achim Hurrelmann
2024 FPA Research Excellence Award
2019-2024 SSHRC Insight Grant

2019-2024 SSHRC Insight Grant:
“The Reconfiguration of Canada-Europe Relations after Brexit”

The research will examine how Brexit – the process of negotiating and implementing the withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union – affects Canada’s transatlantic relationship with various European partners. It focuses on four aspects of the Canada-Europe relationship: (a) trade and investment; (b) security and defence; (c) environment and energy; as well (d) as political relations and identities. Please see the project website for more information.

The research will be conducted in cooperation with three other leading scholars of Canada-Europe relations, Petra Dolata (University of Calgary), Patrick Leblond (University of Ottawa) and Frédéric Mérand (Université de Montréal). The project has been awarded a grant of $299,673 for a five-year period (2019-2024).

Jonathan Malloy
2025 FPGA Research Excellence Award