Award winners

Research Excellence Awards

In recognition of Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences researchers who have produced sustained and impactful scholarly output and achieved national and international recognition throughout their careers.

2025 Winners

Research Excellence Award in Humanities

Marianne Ignace

Linguistics, Indigenous Studies, and Indigenous Languages

Marianne Ignace is professor in the Departments of Linguistics and Indigenous Studies, and director of the Indigenous Languages Program and Indigenous Languages Centre. Her earlier publications include The Curtain Within: Haida Social and Symbolic Discourse, and a practical grammar of Ts鈥檓syen Sm鈥檃lgyax co-authored with Margaret Anderson. Based on many years of studies in Secwepemc ethnobotany and ethnoecology, she edited and wrote, with Nancy Turner and Sandra Peacock, Secwepemc People and Plants: Research Papers on Shuswap Ethnobotany (2016), and with Chief Ron Ignace, she co-authored Secwepemc People, Land and Laws 鈥� Yeri7 re Stsq虛ey虛s-kucw, an award-winning epic journey through 10,000 years of Secwepemc history. A resident of the Skeetchestn community in the Secwepemc Nation, she currently teaches and coordinates courses in Indigenous languages in Secwepemc communities, Haida Gwaii and other places. With Chief Ron Ignace, she was awarded the 2019 Governor General's Innovation Award. She is currently completing two annotated and illustrated volumes of narratives in X瘫aad Kil (Haida 鈥� through collaboration with the late G瘫awangdli虂i Skila虂a Lawrence Bell) and Secwepemctsin (Shuswap 鈥� with Ron Ignace), which show the intricate complexities of language, thought, environmental knowledge and their reflection in the laws of human conduct in each Nation. For her leadership in a SSHRC partnership grant, she received the 2019 SSHRC Impact Award, and was elected as a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 2020.

Research Excellence Award in Social Sciences

Mark Pickup

Political Science

A professor in the Department of Political Science, Mark Pickup is a specialist in political behaviour, political psychology, and political methodology. Substantively, his research primarily falls into three areas: political identities and political decision-making; conditions of democratic responsiveness and accountability; and polls and electoral outcomes. His research focuses on political information, public opinion, political identities, norms and election campaigns within North American and European countries. His methodological interests concern the analysis of longitudinal data (time series, panel, network, etc.) with secondary interests in Bayesian analysis and survey/lab experiment design. He is the author of the Sage Quantitative Applications in the Social Sciences book, Introduction to Time Series. His research is published in journals such as the American Journal of Political Science, British Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Electoral Studies, Canadian Journal of Political Science, Political Analysis, and Political Behavior.

Early Career Research Excellence Award in Humanities

Vaibhav Saria

Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies

Vaibhav Saria received their PhD in Anthropology from Johns Hopkins University in 2014, and is currently assistant professor of gender, sexuality, and women鈥檚 studies at 大象传媒. Their research explores topics at the intersection of gender, sexuality, poverty, and health studies. Their book Hijras, Lovers, Brothers: Surviving Sex and Poverty in Rural India was published by Fordham University Press and won multiple awards including the Joseph W. Elder Prize by the American Institute of Indian Studies and the Ruth Benedict Book Prize from the Association for Queer Anthropology in 2021. Saria was also a member of , an international team of researchers working to advance methodologies to measure and improve the quality of tuberculosis care. The timely importance of their research on tuberculosis was underscored by its overlaps with the recent COVID-19 pandemic, on which they have also been focusing some of their most recent scholarly activity. They are currently working on two research projects: a culturally comparative approach to MAID (Medical Assistant in Dying) and queer archives left behind by the South Asian diaspora.

Early Career Research Excellence Award in Social Sciences

Yushu Zhu

Urban Studies and Public Policy

Yushu Zhu is an Assistant Professor of Urban Studies and Public Policy. Her research focuses on urban inequality and the roles of the state, market, and civil society in (re)producing socio-spatial injustice in cities. Informed by interdisciplinary perspectives, she employs mixed methods to examine housing and neighborhoods in relation to community wellbeing, urban (re)development and public policy. Zhu has received research funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC), and the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. As a co-investigator of the , her current work focuses on housing inequality in Canada and the role of community housing in addressing housing vulnerability.

Past winners

2024

Research Excellence Award in Humanities: Lara Campbell (GSWS)
Research Excellence Award in Social Sciences: Arthur Robson (ECON)
Early Career Research Excellence Award in Humanities: Joanne Leow (ENGL)
Early Career Research Excellence Award in Social Sciences: Yuthika Girme (PSYC)

大象传媒

Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences