Three Arts researchers receive SSHRC funding for projects in psychology, economics and migration
The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada’s (SSHRC) Insight Research Grants (external link) aims to enhance knowledge and comprehension regarding individuals, societies, and the global landscape by providing support for research in the social sciences and humanities. Funding opportunities are available for short-term research projects lasting up to two years, proposed by either individuals or research teams.
.jpg)
Dr. Caroline Erentzen, Dr. Nicholas Li and Dr. John Carlaw
Dr. Caroline Erentzen is an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology. Dr. Erentzen's research interests examine the intersection of law and psychology, with a focus on wrongful convictions, jury biases, and the way that social identities can create a risk for violence and victimization.
Dr. Erentzen recently received an SSHRC Insight Development Grant to study the role of incentivized witnesses contributing to wrongful convictions. This type of witness receives money or other benefits in exchange for testimony that will incriminate an accused person. These witnesses are known to be unreliable and have been tied to up to 20 per cent of wrongful convictions. The presence of such witnesses during trials consistently leads to higher rates of guilty verdicts compared to control conditions. Dr. Erentzen’s research will explore whether the current legal safeguards protect against such problematic testimony and whether there may be more effective ways to reduce their damaging impact. The research hopes to uncover more about this form of unreliable but persuasive evidence and how to reduce the risk they create for wrongful convictions.
“As this is a new area of study for my lab, this research will support our efforts toward data collection and knowledge creation. We will develop materials to be tested with community members (hence, potential jurors) to understand more about how such witnesses are viewed and what effect they have on legal decision making,” said Dr. Erentzen. “We will be able to fund multiple studies on this topic, incorporate graduate student support, and enhance our knowledge mobilization through scholarly communications at national and international conferences, communications with legal practitioners, and development of best practice guidelines. This two-year project will ultimately lead to the development of a larger, long-term program of research.”
Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics, Dr. Nicholas Li, is an economist whose primary research and teaching fields are development and empirical trade. His research primarily focuses on how trade costs and market power influence the price and variety of products available and the implications for nutrition and consumer welfare.
Dr. Li's recent SSHRC-funded research, along with Dr. Angela Daley, Dr. Tracey Galloway and Dr. Barry Watson titled, "Evaluating policies to improve food affordability, nutrition and food security in Canada’s remote Northern communities,” concerns communities in Canada's North with extremely high transport costs and retailer market power; communities that feature Canada's highest food prices and rates of food security. The research focuses on a quantitative analysis of two existing policy tools - freight subsidies for nutritious foods paid to retailers, and income transfers to households - and an assessment of their impact on local food prices, consumption of nutritious foods, food insecurity and inequality. It combines econometric methods, economic theory of firm and consumer behaviour, and access to confidential product-level retailer data collected by the Nutrition North Canada program and Statistics Canada micro-data with publicly available data collected from various sources.
“The SSHRC Insight Development Grant will be directed towards hiring graduate student research assistants at TMU to collect data on prices, freight rates, income support programs, governance structures, and local harvesting,” said Dr. Li. “It is also being used to fund knowledge mobilization through conference presentations and the creation of a database integrating all of the publicly available data collected by the project to facilitate research on these communities.”
Dr. John Carlaw is a senior research associate for the CERC Migration and Integration. Dr. Carlaw’s research examines continuity and change in the politics of citizenship, immigration and multiculturalism. He seeks to identify and comparatively analyze the evolving and competing political-economic projects and narratives that are important in framing and shaping Canada’s immigration present and future. He has recently been awarded an SSHRC Insight Development Grant (2023-2025) to further develop this research through a project entitled “Contemporary Paradoxes and Struggles of Migration and Belonging in Canada.”
The Insights Development Grant funding, received this year, builds on Dr. Carlaw’s recent CONTESTATIONS of Migration and Belonging Project. The project focused on developments during and emerging from the COVID-19 pandemic. The SSHRC funding will enable Dr. Carlaw’s team to extend the period of analysis to the broader post-2016 period in Canada within its transnational context. This extended period will allow the team to collect and examine a larger set of documents expressing actors’ policy preferences and discourses from across the political spectrum, as well as to systematically analyze interviews with important migration actors.
“I am excited that it will train and create research, employment and professional development opportunities for graduate students.” Dr. Carlaw continues, “Our original empirical research will permit us to compare existing and emerging migration discourses and policy stances while examining relationships between the actors promoting them in a period of rapid social, political and technological change.”
This research will contribute to advancing interdisciplinary discussions on migration, immigration policies, and their politics. Dr. Carlaw’s team hopes that their findings will inform policy thinking and advocacy efforts aimed at addressing the circumstances, social dynamics, and political structures encountered by migrants and immigrants. Furthermore, the research aims to provide critical insights into the organic and discursive connections between mainstream and far-right actors and discourses, as well as the resistance to them by migrant-led organizations and their allies.
The Insight Research program 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.