Two UNBC professors have received grants to continue researching medical history and the role local governments play in promoting entrepreneurs in rural and small-town communities.
History Associate Professor Dr. Jacqueline Holler and Geography Professor Dr. Greg Halseth received the funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Insight Grant, totalling more than $330,000.
“Support from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council facilitates the thorough investigations and originative explorations UNBC researchers engage in every day, “says UNBC Interim President Dr. Geoff Payne in a news release.
“These projects will also provide opportunities for graduate students and post-doctoral researchers to collaborate with expert faculty members.”
Dr. Holler received a $181,948 award for her project titled Medicines, Marvels and Mestizaje: Women’s Healing in New Spain, 1530-1750.
She, along with two master’s students and a post-doctoral researcher, are set to examine conventional medical treatises used in New Spain, as well as convent recipe books that contained healing remedies and inquisition records that describe women’s healing activities and the herbs, medicines, and even incantations that ordinary people used to treat illness.
Dr. Halseth's project, titled Entrepreneurialism and rural/small-town local government, is getting $149,388 from the funding, which will include multiple graduate students, examines the critical role of local government in responding to the forces re-shaping resource-dependent communities and economies.
“These projects are superb examples of research in the humanities and social sciences underway at UNBC,” adds UNBC acting Vice-President Research Dr. Kathy Lewis in the same release.
“The knowledge these research teams are generating will provide insights we can use to initiate positive change today and inform the work of future scholars.”
This research is directly funded by SSHRC.
The Research Support Fund, a tri-agency initiative of SSHRC, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), assists Canadian post-secondary institutions and their affiliated research hospitals and institutes with the expenses associated with managing the research funded by these three federal research-granting agencies.
