A video recording of the October 2013 Big Thinking lecture with Richard Hawkins is now available to view online. The next Big Thinking lecture takes place on November 21st with Ron Deibert, Director of the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto. His talk, which will address cyber security, will be of particular interest in light of recent revelations about Canadian espionage activities in Brazil, new Facebook policies, and Bell Canada’s plan to track its customers’ network habits for advertising purposes. Registration for that lecture is now open. The December 10thBig Thinking lecture will be presented by Céline Le Bourdais, who was recently awarded the Acfas Prix Thérèse Gouin-Décarie. She also recently discussed her research in an interview with Le Devoir.
The Globe and Mail published their Canadian University Report for 2014 last week, which includes a number of articles discussing the current outlook for the country’s postsecondary education and some of the developing trends among Canadian institutions. Included are such topics as innovation and interdisciplinary studies, the increased emergence of programs in social entrepreneurship, and the impact of social media, massive open online courses, and other technology on the higher-ed experience.
The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) are looking for feedback on a new policy for federally-funded research. The consultation period will run until December 13th, 2013, and will serve to collect feedback on a draft of the new Tri-agency Open Access Policy, which was developed based on the open access policy adopted by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) in 2008. The Federation is currently developing a response to this consultation, and welcomes feedback from members.
SSHRC, NSERC, CIHR, and the Canadian Foundation for Innovation have also launched a consultation document in collaboration with Genome Canada, which looks at the challenges for today’s research needs in a digital context. The document, Toward a Policy Framework for Advancing Digital Scholarship in Canada, is open for input until December 16, 2013. The Federation is developing a response to this consultation as well, and welcomes feedback from its membership.
A new series of videos by the SSHRC Regional Panel of the National Capital Region and Southern Ontario highlights special areas of interest and SSH research strengths at 6 Ontario universities. The videos are part of SSHRC’s Imagining Canada’s Future project. Find out more.