SSH News: Canada Prizes finalists, SSHRC Storytellers finalists, Big Thinking, Keeping the humanities alive

Blog
3 avril 2014

The Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences was pleased to announce the finalists for the 2014 Canada Prizes during its 2014 Annual Conference last Friday. An animated afternoon reception celebrated the authors of 14 books that were named finalists for the 2014 Canada Prizes. It was a great delight to see a handful of finalists and publishers in attendance for the announcement. The Canada Prizes are awarded annually to the best scholarly books in the humanities and social sciences that have received funding from the Awards to Scholarly Publications Program. The four winners of the 2014 Canada Prizes will be announced at the beginning of May and the prizes, each valued at $2,500, will be presented at the Canada Prizes Awards Ceremony on Wednesday, May 7, 2014 at York University's Glendon College in Toronto.

Be it known that this was no April Fool’s: on Tuesday, April 1, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council revealed the Top 25 finalists in the 2014 Research for a Better Life: The Storytellers challenge! The competition invites Canadian university students to submit a three-minute pitch in their choice of format -- text, video, etc. -- on SSHRC-funded research from their institution. As part of their winnings, the Top 25 will each receive a prize of $3,000 and the opportunity to attend Congress 2014. At Congress, they will participate in an exclusive research communications workshop and compete in The Storytellers Showcase to become one of the Final Five Storytellers.

Today’s Big Thinking lecture “The secret to our success: Immigration policy in Canada” was presented by Irene Bloemraad, Barnes Chair of Canadian Studies and CIFAR Senior Fellow from the University of California, Berkeley. This lecture explored the pillars of success undergirding Canada's immigration policy to date, and cracks in these pillars moving forward. The video of Bloemraad’s lecture will be available on the Federation website shortly. In the meantime, be sure to listen to Blomeraad’s talk here and read “The key to Canada’s immigration success”, published in the Ottawa Citizen yesterday, ahead of the event.

Last but not least, this week’s news round-up of the value of a humanities or social sciences degree includes some must-reads: