SACKVILLE, NB — Four Mount Allison faculty members recently received more than $600,000 in grant funding through the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada’s (SSHRC) Insight Grant and Insight Development Grant programs —  Dr. Lauren Beck (visual and material culture studies), Dr. Corrine Cash (geography & environment), Dr. Linda Pearse (music), and Dr. Casey Pender (philosophy, politics, & economics). 

“It is fantastic to see these four Mount Allison researchers receive SSHRC grants to support these research initiatives through different stages of development,” says Provost and Vice-President, Academic and Research Dr. Richard Isnor. “All four rated highly in their competitions and this reflects the high quality of their applications. Congratulations to Dr. Pearse, Dr. Beck, Dr. Cash, and Dr. Pender for their ongoing commitment to research excellence.” 

Dr. Lauren Beck — Canada Research Chair in Intercultural Encounter 
 
2024 Insight Grant: Place Name Policy and Identity in the 21st Century: North America, $274,160 — Studying place name and monument policy across North American municipalities to see what community priorities look like and to understand how identity informs policy. 
 
2025 Insight Development Grant: Food in the Gendered Neoliberal Matrix of Power, $59,800 — Looking at the impacts of colonization on our foodways and how food has continued to divide society. It finds ways of building intercultural bridges between different parts of the world. 
 
Dr. Corrine Cash — Associate Professor, Geography & Environment 
 
2025 Insight Development Grants: Beyond Fiona: Disaster Risk Reduction and Recovery in Cape Breton Regional Municipality, $64,972 — This research aims to understand the impacts of, and the subsequent response to, Hurricane Fiona in the Cape Breton Regional Municipality (CBRM) to assess the area’s preparedness through climate adaptation measures and develop evidence-based policy recommendations for improving disaster response and disaster risk management for hurricanes in this and similar regions. The research aims to investigate the economic, social, cultural, and physical impacts of Hurricane Fiona on residents of CBRM, the factors that hindered effective and efficient Disaster Response (DR) and Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) in CBRM, including past socioeconomic conditions and determine the role that social capital played in creating resiliency in disaster response in CBRM. 
 
Dr. Linda Pearse — Canada Research Chair in Music, Contact, and Conflict 

2024 Insight Grant: Inclusive Histories of Music: Scholarly Challenges and Pedagogical Responsibilities, $193,326 — Working with two co-applicants (Margaret Walker from Queen’s and Sandria P. Bouliane from Laval) and international collaborators, this project joins an expanding international conversation about why certain music continues to be privileged in academic study, whose histories are taught in the post-secondary classroom, and how research methodologies shape scholarship and post-secondary teaching in the discipline of music history. 

The Sackville Undergraduate Music Research (SUMR) Lab will prepare and transfer literature reviews and course design materials to prominent digital platforms. They will undertake ethnographic study by interviewing Canadian music professionals, students, and scholars within and beyond the academy. They will train and mentor numerous types of students, publish articles, and create an open-access co-edited volume with five leading scholars. 
 
Dr. Casey Pender — Frank McKenna School of Philosophy, Politics and Economics Post-doctoral Fellow 
 
2025 Insight Development Grant: Indigenous Economies and Exclusion: The Potlatch and Colonial Banking Practices in Canada, $43,181 — This project primarily examines Indigenous economic institutions in pre-colonial North America, with a focus on the potlatch as a rational and sophisticated financial system comparable to Western monetary arrangements. It also examines how colonial policies disrupted these Indigenous systems without providing viable alternatives. This is done by analyzing historical patterns of financial exclusion through a novel dataset that maps Canada's banking network between 1840 and 1914. 
 
About SSHRC 

The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) is the federal research funding agency that promotes and supports postsecondary-based research and research training in the humanities and social sciences (www.sshrc-crsh.gc.ca). 

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

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. Funding is provided for short-term research development projects of up to two years that are proposed by individuals or teams.