Social sciences research at AU gets a boost with major federal grant

June 18, 2012

Mike Gismondi, with the Centre for Social Sciences at AU, has been awarded a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Partnership Development Grant worth $200,000 over the next two years.

Gismondi, along with research partners Mike Lewis, Canadian Centre for Community Renewal (Port Alberni, BC); Ana Maria Peredo; Centre for Co-Operative Based Economy, University of Victoria; Noel Keough, Faculty of Environmental Design, University of Calgary are working with the BC Alberta Social Economy Network (BALTA) on the project "Social Economy, Community Resilience and the Transition to Sustainability."

This two year partnership development initiative will enable both existing BALTA partners and new participants to explore a longer term research partnership into the importance of the social economy in advancing sustainability, and prepare the group to apply for a major SSHRC Partnership Grant in 2014.

"We're very pleased to be able to provide institutional support for an important practitioner and academic research partnership," said Gismondi. "And I'm excited to have AU Athabasca host the administration, and to provide the distributed support for communication and community building. Also, I'm looking forward to supporting an AU graduate student or two to work in the area."

The funding will support an administrator and two senior graduate students, who will be recruited this fall (hopefully one at AU). AU Central will be the new administrative home to the research partnership, and we hope to establish AU as the institutional hub for the BALTA and the social economy research partnership into the future.

For more information, contact:
John O'Brien
Manager, Communications and Media Relations
403-298-2931
403-990-1131 (cell)
jobrien@athabascau.ca
Twitter: @MediaAU

 

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Updated August 21, 2012