University of Regina faculty members will receive over $240,000 for research in a wide range of areas, including homelessness and incarceration of Aboriginal women, local water governance, and contemporary African cinema.

The funding is being awarded today by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC).

"The support received today reflects the wide range of leading-edge research that is being undertaken by our researchers in social science and humanities," says the University of Regina's Vice-President Research (Acting) Rod Kelln. "The community-focused nature of many of these projects emphasizes the importance that this University places on connecting with and providing solutions for society."

The following researchers were successful in the Standard Research Grant category, receiving a total of $186,047 for the following three-year projects:

Margot Hurlburt (Faculty of Arts) will focus her research on the importance of community participation in local water governance and environmental decisions through watershed planning. This research will help reduce the vulnerability of communities to climate change by integrating local people into water management decision making. Her project is titled "Water Governance and Climate Change: the Engagement of Civil Society".

Sheila Petty (Faculty of Fine Arts) will explore the notion that African cinema is and always has been a traveling cinema, created at the interstices of competing histories, cultures and economic impulses, and that African identity is produced by local and global forces. Through this project, "Afropolitanism and Traveling Aesthetics in African Cinema", she will search for a methodology to account for the multiple expressions of African narrative and cinematic aesthetics present in contemporary African cinema.

Jeanne Shami (Faculty of Arts) will explore the political, religious and cultural significance of early modern English sermons, in particular the scholarly advancement of John Donne studies through her research on Donne's Sermons and Letters for Oxford University Press, and Donne's Verse Letters for the Donne Variorum Project. Her work on Women and Sermons in Early Modern Sermons (1517-1688) will demonstrate the cultural significance of sermons as they pertain to the role of women in the development of the Church in England after the Reformation. By showing how women participated in sermon culture as patrons, consumers, and domestic preachers of sermons, as well as the subjects of them, this work will continue the intellectual inquiry that humanities scholars bring to religious and political debate in early modern culture.

In the "Aboriginal Research Grant" category, Brigette Krieg (Faculty of Social Work) received $25,000 for her community-based research with Aboriginal communities. This project involves working with Aboriginal women who have experienced homelessness and incarceration to assist them with finding ways to use their knowledge, experience and skills to make a difference for themselves. This research with Aboriginal women will provide a model of Aboriginal-infused community based research and strong foundation to support a program aimed at promoting voices of Aboriginal women oppressed by poverty, homelessness and incarceration.

In the "Aid to Research Workshops and Conferences in Canada" category, Charity Marsh (Faculty of Fine Arts) received $32,200 for her conference "Spaces of Violence, Sites of Resistance: Music, Media and Performance". This international, bilingual conference offered a variety of perspectives on themes including music and geopolitics; music and racism; music as a politics of resistance; music and globalization; and music, media and new genres. The conference will be followed by the publication of the proceedings in scholarly journals as well as online.