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Meet Mount Royal’s 2025 Tri-Agency Grant recipients
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- National Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Discovery Grants
- Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) Insight Grants
- SSHRC Insight Development Grants
- SSHRC Partnership Engage
- SSHRC Connection Grant
National Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Discovery Grants
NSERC Discovery Grants support “ongoing programs of research with long-term goals rather than a single short-term project or collection of projects,” and “recognize the creativity and innovation that are at the heart of all research advances.”
Trevor King, PhD
Faculty of Health, Community and Education
"The impact of exercise and wildfire smoke exposure on the vasculature"
Grant amount: $165,000
Blood vessels play a key role in blood circulation and preventing atherosclerotic plaque buildup, and their function can change in response to different external stresses such as air pollution. Wildfire smoke, which is becoming more common due to the increased frequency of wildfires, contains various pollutants that can affect the cardiovascular system. If individuals exercise in wildfire smoke, they increase their breathing rate and depth, which then increases the volume of pollutants to which they are exposed. King's research studies how wildfire smoke impacts blood vessel function during exercise and aims to uncover important insights into how these stressors interact.
The goal is to understand the immediate effects of exercising in wildfire smoke on blood vessel function in males and females, and to identify any mechanisms that contribute to these effects. Blood flow, artery stiffness and the functioning of the cells lining the blood vessels (endothelial cells) are measured. The research also aims to determine if higher levels of smoke exposure cause greater changes in these functions. This knowledge could help inform future studies and assist in creating potential strategies for reducing or mitigating the effects of environmental stressors such as wildfire smoke.
As wildfire smoke becomes more common, especially in Western Canada, people are increasingly exposed to wildfire-induced air pollution. This exposure also affects outdoor workers, athletes and anyone active in smoky environments. Understanding how wildfire smoke impacts blood vessels will advance knowledge in vascular biology, exercise physiology and environmental science. King’s work will also contribute to models that predict the effects of environmental pollutants on health and function. This research will guide future studies and help develop strategies to adapt to or mitigate these impacts by aligning with broader efforts to understand natural and human-made environmental changes.
Nausheen Sadiq, PhD
Faculty of Science and Technology
“Chitosan-Based Membranes For In Vitro Permeability Analysis of Trace Elements from Cosmetic and Personal Care Products Using Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry (ICP-MS)”
Grant amount: $175,000
Cosmetic and personal-care products are used daily, driving a multi-billion-dollar industry. These products contain up to 10,000 chemical substances, including heavy metals such as lead, mercury, cadmium and arsenic, all of which are toxic to humans. Sadiq’s NSERC funding will lead to the development of artificial skin that mimics real people of all ages, genders and ethnicities. By determining the levels of toxic metals in cosmetic and personal-care products and exposing them to the newly created artificial skin, we will be able to accurately predict the risk associated with elemental exposure and leaching of cosmetic and personal care products. This research will aid in the implementation of government regulations and risk models that will help to ensure consumer safety.
Sadiq's research program focuses on keeping Canadians safe by studying food, water, soil and cosmetics at the elemental level. MRU undergraduate students interested in analytical chemistry are involved in the research, with the goal of contributing to a healthier, safer and more informed world.
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) Insight Grants
SSHRC Insight Grants “support research excellence in the social sciences and humanities,” with funding available for from two to five years.
Hadi Fariborzi, PhD, and Simon Raby, PhD
Faculty of Business, Communication Studies and Aviation
“Unleashing Canada's Scale-Up Potential: Tackling the Productivity Challenge through Evidence-Based Strategies for High-Growth SMEs”
Grant amount: $78,066
Canada has one of the highest rates of early-stage entrepreneurship among advanced economies, yet relatively few firms grow beyond the startup phase. This “scale-up gap” is a major concern given that small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) account for nearly all Canadian businesses and are critical for job creation and innovation.
This project addresses this challenge by conducting the largest-ever systematic review and meta-analysis of SME growth. By bringing together and analyzing thousands of studies, an open-science database will be created to shed new light on what drives high-growth firms and why some businesses scale while others remain small.
This project represents a unique contribution, as the meta-analysis has collected and synthesized over 2,700 studies — the largest dataset of its kind on SME growth. This database will not only support current investigation but also serve as an open-science resource that can fuel years of future research into the factors driving SME success and scale-up potential.
The goal is to provide evidence-based insights that help entrepreneurs, policymakers, and support organizations strengthen Canada’s productivity and competitiveness. In doing so, Raby aims to ensure more Canadian SMEs can realize their full growth potential and contribute to long-term economic prosperity.
SSHRC Insight Development Grants
Insight Development Grants support research in its initial stages, enabling the development of new research questions, as well as experimentation with new methods, theoretical approaches and/or ideas.
Shelley Boulianne, PhD
Faculty of Business, Communication Studies & Aviation
“Artificial intelligence (AI) and evidence-based public policy in information and communication technology (ICT)”
Grant amount: $67,104
Evidence-based policymaking will produce more effective interventions to address societal problems. However, many studies document the low use of evidence in policy documents. Additional challenges relate to using evidence in policymaking for public policies attached to information and communication technology (ICT). The issues are often highly technical, making them difficult to understand and address. While academic research offers insights about ICT policy solutions, policymakers criticize the academic literature for inaccessibility (paywalls), lack of relevance, being too technical, lack of context and being untimely. When policymakers consider research, they may favour high-profile studies that are not peer-reviewed rather than evidence synthesis studies that summarize dozens of studies to determine the consensus about a topic.
In the proposed research project, Boulianne and her research team aim to 1) understand the role of evidence synthesis studies in policy decisions related to ICT, 2) explore how AI could be used to conduct evidence synthesis faster, more comprehensively, and more efficiently to match the timelines for the policymaking process, and 3) develop effective ways to share the findings from evidence synthesis studies with policymakers and build policymakers’ capacity to evaluate the quality of these important scholarly outputs. For the latter two objectives, the research will focus on identifying effective policy interventions to maximize the health, social, and economic benefits while minimizing harm related to teenagers’ social media use. This is a critical global political issue.
Celeste Pang, PhD
Faculty of Arts
“Queering Home: Using Photovoice to Explore 2SLGBTQ+ Adults’ Shared Housing Models and Practices”
Grant amount: $68,764
Queering Home examines shared housing models and practices among 2SLGBTQ+ adults in Ontario and Alberta who have chosen intentional and long-term cohabitation with others with whom they are not legally related or romantically involved (e.g., friends). It uses photovoice methods, a participatory action research method that combines photography and group discussion. The study asks: (1) Why do 2SLGBTQ+ adults enter into long-term shared housing arrangements with others to whom they are not legally related or romantically involved, and what meaning do they make from their cohabitation situations and practices?; and (2) How do intersections of age, ability, race, migration experience, socio-economic status and housing policy context shape the formation and practices of such households? Through this study, we aim to learn more about the social and economic drivers and impacts of shared housing, and build critical knowledge relating to the intersection of housing and 2SLGBTQ+ identities and social relations.
The study is a collaboration with Egale Canada. Co-Investigators are Dr. Victor Pérez-Amado (Toronto Metropolitan University), Dr. Brittany Jakubiec (Egale Canada), and Dr. Gloria Pérez-Rivera (Mount Royal University)
Leah Hamilton, PhD, and Corinne Mason, PhD
Faculty of Business, Communication Studies and Aviation
“Tracing the impacts of the anti-2SLGBTQIA+ legislation in Alberta on queer families”
Grant amount: $75,000
"Tracing the impacts of the anti-2SLGBTQIA+ legislation in Alberta on queer families" examines the impacts of the contemporary "parental rights" movement and associated anti-2SLGBTQIA+ legislation on queer families in Alberta. This new research extends a SSHRC Explore-funded pilot study in Calgary that focused on the roll-out of provincial legislation aimed at limiting inclusive education, banning trans women and girls from female sport, and prohibiting gender-affirming health care for trans and gender-diverse youth. Now that this legislation has been enacted by the provincial government, Hamilton and Mason will study the impacts on families, especially 2SLGBTQIA+ youth, through serial focus groups and surveys across Alberta.
Early findings from the pilot study can be read on Substack.
The results of this project will play a major role in shaping public understanding, policy and legal interventions, and academic studies on emergent threats to 2SLGBTQIA+ rights in Canada.
Kristen Schaffer, PhD
Faculty of Health, Community and Education
“Exploring the radical possibilities of artists-in-residence in a department of education”
Grant amount: $67,768
Schaffer’s SSHRC Insight Development Grant, "Exploring the radical possibilities of artists-in-residence in a department of education," partners local artists with Mount Royal teacher-candidates in a 13-week residency embedded in coursework and school practicum. Using community-based and action research with creative inquiry, she will examine how collaborative artmaking shapes teacher identity, equity-minded practice and public engagement, culminating in a public exhibition. The goal is to develop a practical, sustainable model for artist–teacher partnerships that makes arts integration central in elementary education.
Schaffer teaches arts integration and anti-oppressive education and is inspired by how artists expand what classrooms can be.
Gloria Perez-Rivera, PhD
Faculty of Arts
“Examining the financialization of migration and housing nexus through a multi-sited ethnography among Latin American migrants to Canada”
Grant amount: $70,049
This multi-sited ethnographic study explores the nexus between the financialization of migration and the financialization of housing by examining the credit and debt practices Latin American migrants engage in to fund their migration journeys and their settlement in Canadian cities with high housing costs. This study will focus on Latin American migrants who have arrived in Canada from the United States and Colombia, Venezuela, Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and/or El Salvador since 2016 (the start of the first Donald Trump presidency) and are living and working in Calgary or the Greater Toronto Area.
The study asks: (1) What are the distinct relations of debt and credit that Latin American migrants have established to finance their migration and settlement?; (2) How does the financialization of migration intersect with the financialization of housing to impact where migrants in precarious financial situations live and find work? This research will create insights into how different credit and debt relations enable transnational migration and how migration and settlement are forms of capital accumulation through the financialization of economically marginalized populations.
SSHRC Partnership Engage Grants respond to the objectives of the Research Partnerships program, which is to “realize social sciences and humanities research’s potential for influence, benefit and impact, within and beyond postsecondary institutions.”
Ranjan Datta, PhD (Principal Investigator), Emdad Haque PhD (University of Manitoba), Tanvir Chowdhury, PhD (University of Calgary), Yvonne Su, PhD (York University)
“Sustainable Resettlement or Re-displacement? Examining the Long-Term Impacts of Post-Cyclone Disaster Adaptation in Rural Coastal Indigenous Communities in Bangladesh”
Grant amount: $25,000
Datta’s project explores how Indigenous communities in coastal Bangladesh, particularly the Munda people, cope with cyclones and forced resettlement. Over the past decade, many families have been relocated following disasters such as cyclones Sidr and Aila. While intended as protection, resettlement has caused loss of land rights, disrupted cultural ties and increased vulnerabilities.
Working with the Sundarban Adibasi Munda Sangstha (SAMS), the region’s only Munda-led Indigenous organization, the project documents community experiences, highlights what knowledge has been sustained, and co-develops culturally grounded strategies for climate adaptation. Using community-driven methods — Elders’ storytelling, collective story sharing and mapping — the research ensures displaced families’ voices inform local and national policies.
Datta aims to understand the social, cultural and economic impacts of resettlement, support SAMS in advocating for Munda land rights and centre Indigenous knowledge in climate adaptation discussions.
As Canada Research Chair in Community Disaster Research at Mount Royal University, Datta draws on 17+ years of experience with Indigenous communities globally, bridging local knowledge with climate policy through justice, culture, and land-based approaches to resilience.
SSHRC Connection Grants “support events and outreach activities geared toward short-term, targeted knowledge mobilization initiatives.”
Celeste Pang, PhD
“Setting a Community-Based Research Agenda by, with, and for 2S/LBTQ+ Women and Gender Diverse People: A Multi-Disciplinary Gathering”
Grant amount: $24,332
2S/LBTQ+ women and gender-diverse communities face important social and health inequities. These communities are underrepresented in community-engaged research, and there is a need for more research by and for 2S/LBTQ+ women and gender-diverse communities focused on their diverse social issues, health needs, cultures, and priorities. This gathering will bring together a multidisciplinary group of 2S/LBTQ+ women and gender-diverse individuals to (a) discuss issues of under-representation in community-engaged research and training; (b) identify emerging issues, priorities, and research questions for future community-engaged research concerning our communities, and (c) facilitate networking and mentorship, including for students and trainees. The gathering will be held in Montreal, QC, following the Community-Based Research Centre’s annual 2S/LGBTQIA+ focused Summit, with options for online engagement. Highlights from this gathering will be communicated through a bilingual (English and French) public-facing community-engaged research action agenda.
The project is a collaboration with the Community-Based Research Centre (CBRC).