Over 40 Arts scholars awarded SSHRC Insight and Insight Development Grants



A total of over 40 projects led by UBC Arts researchers were awarded funding through the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC)’s 2024 Insight Grants and Insight Development Grants competition.

Learn more about the Arts recipients and their projects below.


Insight Grants

Insight Grants support research excellence in social sciences and humanities. Funding is available to both emerging scholars and established scholars for research initiatives of two to five years.

Dr. Shaylih Muehlmann, Anthropology

  • Research: Narco-Animalia: Human-Animal relations in Mexico’s Narco-Culture

Dr. Mark Turin, Anthropology
Co-applicant: Dr. Christine E. Schreyer
Collaborators: Dr. Aynur Kadir, Dr. David R. Gaertner, Gerald K. Lawson, Dr. John R. Wagner

  • Research: Implementing relational lexicography in four Indigenous language dictionaries

Dr. Janice Ho, English Language and Literatures

  • Research: Culture, Empire, and Development at Midcentury

Dr. Tamara Mitchell, French, Hispanic and Italian Studies

  • Research: Sounds of the Capitalocene: Extraction and Aurality in Mexican Literature

Dr. Anne Murphy, History

  • Research: Reconnecting Partitioned Knowledge: Early Modern Punjab in the Archives

Dr. Tamara Myers, History

  • Research: The Runaways Project: Street Youth and the Transformation of Adolescence in Canada, 1960s-1990s

Dr. Tricia Logan, Institute for Critical Indigenous Studies and School of Public Policy and Global Affairs

  • Research: Facing Colonial Complicity and Mobilizing Reparations in Canadian Higher Education

Dr. Molly Babel, Linguistics

  • Research: Processing Multilingual Phonetic Variation

Dr. Gunnar Hansson, Linguistics

  • Research: Diphthongs: Between Unit and Sequence

Dr. Fatema Amijee, Philosophy

  • Research: Émilie Du Châtelet’s Idealist Legacy

Dr. Edward Slingerland, Philosophy

  • Research: The cultural evolution of moralizing religions: A quantitative historical analysis

Dr. Christiane Hoppmann, Psychology
Co-applicant: Dr. Anita, DeLongis

  • Research: Solitude in Context

Dr. Darko Odic, Psychology

  • Research: The role of surprise and prediction in early math education

Dr. Elizabeth Dunn, Psychology
Collaborator: Dr. Jason Rights

  • Research: How Does Conversational AI Influence Social Connection and Happiness?

Dr. Friedrich Martin Götz, Psychology
Collaborator: Dr. Ara Norenzayan

  • Research: On the structure of cultural norms: where they come from, when they clash, and why they matter

Dr. Janet Werker, Psychology
Co-applicant: Dr. Alexis K. Black
Collaborator: Dr. Xin Sun

  • Research: The influence of language and culture on the development of lexical semantic systems in infants and toddlers

Dr. Jessice Tracy, Psychology

  • Research: Does group-based pride regulate other group-based emotions and promote prosocial intergroup attitudes?

Dr. Lauren Emberson, Psychology

  • Research: Neural correlates of the infant experience: Research embedded in sociocultural contexts

Dr. Kiley Hamlin, Psychology
Collaborator: Dr. Andrew Baron

  • Research: Exploring the emergence of social cognitive intergroup biases: Studies with preverbal infants

Dr. Mark Schaller, Psychology

  • Research: Seasonal Cycles in Attitudes and Dispositions

Dr. Nancy Sin, Psychology

  • Research: Positive emotions and stress responses: An adult developmental perspective

Dr. Alexander Fisher, School of Music

  • Research: Sounding Difference: The Acoustic Culture of Catholic Germany in an Age of Religious Conflict

Dr. Emily Huddart, Sociology
Co-applicant: Dr. Tony Silva

  • Research: Defining, explaining, and disrupting affective climate polarisation in Canada

Dr. Qiang Fu, Sociology

  • Research: One-Twentieth of Canada: Authoritarian-Racist Mythology and Socio-Political Realities of Chinese Canadians

Dr. David Green, Vancouver School of Economics
Co-applicant: Dr. Paul Beaudry

  • Research: Immigration, COVID, and Structural Change in the Canadian Labour Market

Dr. Matthew Lowe, Vancouver School of Economics
Collaborator: Dr. Anahita Karandikar

  • Research: The evolution of discriminatory norms: evidence from untouchability in India

Dr. Sergei Severinov, Vancouver School of Economics

  • Research: Microeconomics of Competitive Information Acquisition and Marketplace Design for Heterogeneous Goods

Dr. Terry Moon, Vancouver School of Economics

  • Research: Carbon Tax Policy Impacts on Firms and Workers

Insight Development Grants

Insight Development Grants support research in its initial stages. The grants enable the development of new research questions, as well as experimentation with new methods, theoretical approaches and/or ideas.

Dr. Courtneay Hopper, Anthropology
Co-applicant: Dr. Camilla Speller

  • Research: Disentangling the diets of early South African food producers through biomolecules preserved in ancient pottery

Dr. Saygin Salgirli, Art History, Visual Art and Theory

  • Research: Painting the Invisible and the Unseen: Image, Knowledge and Truth in Sixteenth-Century Ottoman Art

Dr. Ayaka Yoshimizu, Asian Studies

  • Research: Memorializing the Ungrievable Deaths of Japanese Sex Workers in the Transoceanic Underground

Dr. Danielle Wong, English Language and Literatures

  • Research: Ambient Green Screens: Carceral Composites and Other Speculations in Digital Media

Dr. Kimberly Bain, English Language and Literatures

  • Research: I CAN’T BREATHE: BLACKNESS AND BREATHING IN NORTH AMERICA

Dr. Jemima Nomunume Baada, Geography

  • Research: Climate Change, Renewable Energy, and Rural Live(lihood)s in Ghana

Dr. Pasang Sherpa, Institute for Critical Indigenous Studies and Asian Studies

  • Research: Living: A Sherpa Offering to an Ailing Planet

Dr. Michael Ryan Bochnak, Linguistics
Collaborator: Dr. Marcin Morzycki

  • Research: It’s about time: tense in Ktunaxa and reciprocal knowledge exchange

Dr. Frances Chen, Psychology

  • Research: Prosociality “in the wild”: Understanding the benefits and trade-offs of prosocial engagement in everyday life

Dr. Daniela Palombo, Psychology
Co-applicants: Dr. Frances Chen, Dr. Samantha Dawson, Dr. Christopher Madan, and Dr. Brendan O’Connor

  • Research: Co-reminiscing as a social glue to mitigate loneliness

Dr. Alice Fleerackers, School Journalism, Writing, and Media

  • Research: Watchdog science journalism: A Canada-UK study of practices, challenges, and opportunities

Dr. Matias Margulis, School of Public Policy and Global Affairs

  • Research: The Norm Factory: The Expansion of the UN Human Rights System

Antoine Coulombe, School of Social Work
Co-applicant: Dr. Hannah Kia

  • Research: Queering Schools/Faculties of Social Work in Canada: Photovoice and Exploring the Experiences of 2S/LGBTQI+ Students

Dr. Sam Hwang, Vancouver School of Economics
Co-applicant: Dr. Munir Squires

  • Research: Intergenerational mobility and mortality: evidence from the United States