Research at StFX is tackling pressing social questions, from how children develop a sense of fairness and how Indigenous assessment practices can be reimagined, to reducing food waste, and exploring the ethical use of artificial intelligence. In recognition of this work, 13 St. Francis Xavier University researchers have been awarded funding through the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada's (SSHRC) Insight and Insight Development Grant programs.
Together, the projects span disciplines across the humanities, social sciences, education, health, and business, supporting research that will generate new knowledge while addressing societal issues.
Dr. Erin Morton, StFX Associate Vice President Research, Graduate & Professional Studies, congratulated the StFX faculty members and librarians who have received SSHRC funding through the Insight, Partnership and Connection programs and noted the researchers outstanding work on a diverse range of topics. Securing federal SSHRC support will help advance research and strengthen the liberal arts mission across all four faculties and the Angus L. Macdonald Library, she said. The funding will also help cultivate the next generation of researchers by creating valuable opportunities for students to participate in these important research initiatives.
The recipients include:
Insight Grant
• Dr. John Corbit (Psychology)
Insight Development Grants
• Dr. Alice Johnston, Dr. Lisa Lunney Borden, and Dr. Simon Sylliboy (Education)
• Dr. Abede Mack and Dr. Katelynn Carter-Rogers (Management), with Dr. Greg Hadley (Education)
• Dr. Mahasti Khakpour (Health) and Dr. Elvira Prusaczyk (Psychology)
• Dr. Mendel Péladeau-Houle (Modern Languages)
• Dr. Ken Penner (Religious Studies)
• Dr. Kailin Wright (English)
• Dr. Hailey Murphy (Political Science)
More details on the research projects receiving SSHRC Insight grant support:
Insight Grant
• Dr. John Corbit (Psychology) has received $212,936 over four years for “The cultural origins of fairness.” Fairness concerns emerge early in childhood and are central to harmonious social relationships. They also form the foundation of cooperative relations that enable societies to thrive. Yet, rising economic inequality, declining social cohesion and worsening public health arise from failures of cooperation, as when individuals prioritize their own interests over the welfare of others. Fairness concerns play a crucial role in guiding these decisions, but the psychological processes and sociocultural factors that lead children to behave fairly are underexplored. This research adopts a cultural developmental approach to determine the psychological and sociocultural factors that foster fairness concerns in children.
Insight Development Grants
• Dr. Alice Johnston, Dr. Lisa Lunney Borden, and Dr. Simon Sylliboy (Education), with colleagues from Queens University, have received $91,693 for “Decolonizing Classroom Assessment: Co-Developing and Piloting a Locally Grounded Mi'kmaq Assessment Framework.” Classroom assessment plays a powerful role in shaping how learning is understood and responded to in schools but often remains unexamined in decolonization efforts. While considerable attention has been directed toward decolonizing curriculum and pedagogy, classroom assessment has received far less attention. Through this process, Eurocentric assumptions about knowledge and success that marginalize Indigenous learners are reproduced. This gap is evident globally and across Canada, including in Mi’kma’ki, where classroom assessment practices remain misaligned with Mi’kmaq ways of knowing and being. Responding to this gap, this project collaboratively develops a decolonized, Mi’kmaq-grounded classroom assessment framework. The research builds on long-standing partnerships with Mi’kmaw educators and education leaders and responds to broader calls for holistic, relational, and culturally grounded assessment practices.
• Dr. Abede Mack, Dr. Katelynn Carter-Rogers, (Management), and Dr. Greg Hadley, (Education) have received $93,439 for “Adopting Social Cognitive Career Theory as a De-stigmatizing Intervention for Reframing the Skilled Trades.” Their work addresses a persistent labour market problem: ongoing labour shortages in the skilled trades. By focusing on the beliefs, identities, and social narratives that inform post-secondary choice, and drawing on Social Cognitive Career Theory, they will examine how self-efficacy, outcome expectations, perceived supports and barriers, and intentions toward the trades are formed and constrained by stigma, class expectations, and social identity processes. Importantly, the researchers say they treat entrepreneurship not just a mere alternative for employment but as a central lever for destigmatization of the skilled trades. Framing the trades as pathways to business ownership, autonomy, and community leadership has the potential to disrupt dominant narratives that cast trades work as “second best” and to expand how youth and guardians imagine status, success, and opportunity.
• Dr. Mahasti Khakpour (Health) and Dr. Elvira Prusaczyk (Psychology), are recipients of $97,260 for the project, “Surplus to Solutions: Enhancing Farm-Level Food Redistribution of Edible Avoidable Food Waste in Rural Nova Scotia,” which will be undertaken with a colleague from Mount Saint Vincent University. The purpose of this project is to strengthen rural food rescue pathways in Nova Scotia by exploring how farmers manage edible avoidable food waste and identifying barriers and opportunities to redirect it from farms to community food programs, institutional food services, and secondary or industrial food processors in support of sustainable and equitable food system goals. Findings from this research will also support the federal government’s commitment to reduce food loss and associated greenhouse gas emissions, strengthen food security, and aligns with Nova Scotia's mandate to increase the use of locally produced food in public institutions, enhance provincial food resilience, and build a more sustainable and equitable food system.
• Dr. Mendel Péladeau-Houle, (Modern Languages), has received $64,409 for "Anthropocène et spectralité : la représentation des animaux dans la littérature de langue française de l'extrême-contemporain." Dr. Péladeau-Houle says the “animal turn” of the past two decades has been characterized by the unprecedented attention to animals in the sciences and the media. Yet this re-evaluation is happening at a time when our encounters with wild animals are becoming increasingly rare as a result of urbanization, the decline of animal species and populations, and the growing virtualization of animals. This project examines how this paradox shapes representations of animals in contemporary French-language literature. Drawing on a corpus of 35 works published since 2000, it identifies a recent tendency: animals frequently appear as ghosts, apparitions, or traces, as though haunting the territories from which they are disappearing. The concept of “animal spectrality” provides a basis for challenging a common claim in animal studies: that only realistic representations consistent with biological, ethological, and ecological knowledge can foster ethical reflection on our relationships with animals. More broadly, the project considers literature as a space for exploring new ways of perceiving animals.
• Dr. Ken Penner (Religious Studies) is the recipient of $33,938 in funding for “Methodological validation of generative AI in scholarly editing.” Scholarly editing in the humanities is a fundamentally important but resource-intensive process, relying heavily on traditional or conventional computational methods. The core challenge this project addresses is the rise of Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) yet the lack of a validated, scholarly AI methodology specifically designed for the analysis and editing of historical texts. This gap limits the potential for creation and innovation in the digital sphere.
• Dr. Kailin Wright (English), has received $74,344 for “Archival ACTS: Unsettling Performance Histories in Atlantic Canada.” The work will be done with colleagues from St. Thomas University, Dalhousie University, and Toronto. This project addresses a major gap in knowledge about performance histories in what is now called “Atlantic Canada” by rethinking how these histories have been shared and interpreted. While Canadian theatre history often begins with a 1606 colonial performance at Port Royal (Nova Scotia), performance has played a crucial role on these lands since time immemorial, from Mi’kmaq gatherings to African-settler music traditions. Scholarship on theatre in Atlantic Canada, however, remains sparse, with only five themed journal issues or volumes and with the loss of the digital Atlantic Canadian Theatre Site (ACTS) in 2009, reinforcing the perception that “East is Least” (Lill, Rudakoff). This project tackles these gaps and the organizing container of “Atlantic Canadian history” by reconsidering how theatre histories and archives are active and activated—how they can make performance histories accessible, teachable, and useful.
• Dr. Hailey Murphy (Political Science) is the recipient of $33,525 for “More than a Footnote: The Political History of Lesbians in Canada.” Dr. Murphy's research examines the political history of lesbians in Canada, tracing how lesbian political labour shaped Canadian public life. Her forthcoming book project (Fernwood Publishing) argues that lesbian political engagement emerged out of necessity and unfolded largely outside formal channels — in coalitions, movements, and community organizing rather than parties or legislatures. Because so much of this work faced outward, toward broader feminist and queer struggles, lesbians rarely consolidated a political voice oriented toward their own specific concerns. Dr. Murphy treats that absence as a structural consequence of how the work got done. Working from an anti-essentialist and existentialist framework, she approaches identity as something constituted through action and becoming rather than an innate essence waiting to be uncovered. The project draws on existing demographic evidence, archival material, and theoretical work in feminist and queer studies. As part of the research, Dr. Murphy will conduct interviews, gathering firsthand accounts from lesbians and queer women who have been engaged in political organizing.
