SSHRC consultation

[Glen Nichols]

Hi Ric
Thanks for that wonderfully concise take on the SSHRC proposals. I read the suggestions in the same way, indeed your "fears" are, from what I read, more or less exactly what they ARE saying. Bravo for putting that out there in language less coded than the SSHRC papers.

How do you suggest pressure be applied most effectively?

Glen

Département d'anglais
Université de Moncton
Moncton, N.-B.   E1A 3E9
Tél: (506) 858-4244; Fax: (506) 858-4166
>>> <rknowles at UOGUELPH.CA> 03/11/04 5:15 PM >>>
Hi Marlene and everyone,

My main worry is that I don't think they really mean interdiscipilinary or
applicability--or even accessibility in any useful sense. In my experience with
SSHRC they are looking for large research teams on the MCRI model, teams that
usually aren't really interdisciplinary (in the interdiscursive sense) but
multidisciplinary, or serially disciplinary (involving lots of folks doing
their own thing under one big funding umbrella). Such teams can often involve
huge amounts of management/administrative time and overhead, and often aren't
particularly innovative (or even productive) in real terms.

They want applicability and accessibility, again in my limited experience,
often in the sense that they want academy-private sector collaboration, which
again, doesn't mean working together, and certainly not with NGO's, but means
contract work for private company's, with matching funding. This often means,
of course, "directed research," directed by very particular interests with
money to invest and stakes in the "outcomes."

I think they need pressure if they are going to allow for or encourage
genuinely collaborative work across disciplinary boundaries and across
boundaries between the academy and "the world"--work that not only allows for
but encourages research outside the corporate (R&R, product development) model,
work with social justice organizations, women's organizations, maybe even
theatres--groups that do not have funding, to speak of, beyond government
grants and who can't kick in their share of a "matching grant" scheme because
they are being forced to look for the same thing.

The Canadian Cultural Studies list (out of McMaster) has a lively discussion
underway about this. Thanks for getting Candrama going on it.

Cheers,

Ric


Quoting Marlene Moser <mmoser at brocku.ca>:

> Hello all
>
> I'd be interested in hearing what people have to say about the SSHRC
> consultation presently underway. I'm having a hard time reading the
> text/subtext of this document, and what really is meant by the shift from
> "granting council" to "knowledge council."
>
> I'm all for interdisciplinarity, accessibilty, applicability of research ...
> but phrases like "knowledge mobilization unit" make me nervous. And where is
> the new Research/Creation Grant in Fine Arts in all this? What kind of
> responses are being mobilized out there?
>
> Interested in replies on or off list
>
> Marlene Moser
> Assistant Professor
> Department of Dramatic Arts
> Brock University
> St. Catharines, ON
> L2S 3A1
> 905-688-5550 ext. 3213
> mmoser at brocku.ca
>