The Kule Institute for Advanced Study
ANNUAL REPORT 2011-2012
advancing humanity, lifting the human spirit
KIAS VISION
To found in perpetuity an interdisciplinary and comparative research institute that fosters an innovative intellectual environment for the study of major modern and historical, political, social, economic, and cultural issues and, therein, advances society and global polity in a manner consistent with the high humanitarian ideals of the founding benefactors.
KIAS MISSION
To facilitate transformational interdisciplinary and comparative research at the highest level nationally and internationally, guided by the ideals of Peter and Doris Kule, the legacies of Ukrainian history, and the purpose of research and learning at the University of Alberta, articulated by President Henry Marshall Tory in 1908: “the Uplifting of the Whole People.�
KIAS GOAL
To establish KIAS as a globally recognized institute of interdisciplinary and comparative research excellence within five years of inauguration, by linking University of Alberta undergraduate and graduate student researchers and professors, Kule Postdoctoral Fellows, and distinguished visiting researchers from around the world in and across disciplines, so as to stimulate original ways of thinking, initiate new lines of inquiry, and incubate innovative ideas for the advancement of humanities and the lifting of the human spirit.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Director’s Message
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KIAS Governance Bodies
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KIAS Research Themes (2011-2013)
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2012 Tomorrow’s Ideas, Now
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2012 Research Cluster Grant Awards
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2011 Research Cluster Collaboration
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Interdisciplinary Course Seminar Awards
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Interdisciplinary Course Seminars
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KIAS Postdoctoral Fellows
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KIAS Doctoral Scholars
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Kule Dialogues
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KIAS Masterclass: Undergraduate Research Series
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External Relations
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In the Community
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Web Presence & Analytics
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Our Founding Benefactors
27
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MESSAGE FROM THE FOUNDING DIRECTOR
KIAS celebrated its second year of operation in 2011-2012, and the first year in which all of its research programs were fully in place. Along with already operational grant programs to support Research Clusters, Interdisciplinary Research Course Seminars, and its international undergraduate conference, “Tomorrow’s Ideas, Now,” KIAS introduced grant programs in support of doctoral dissertation and postdoctoral research and of external collaboration grants. Consistent with its mandate to advance interdisciplinary research excellence in the humanities, social sciences, and fine arts across the entire University of Alberta, KIAS’s grants were awarded to individuals from fully ten Faculties: ALES, Arts, Augustana, Business, Campus Saint-Jean, Education, Graduate Studies and Research, Law, Native Studies, and Physical Education and Recreation. Through its Research Cluster grant program, KIAS effectively facilitated the formation of interdisciplinary research initiatives that spanned Departments and Faculties, and in the process positioned its researchers well for future success in applying for extramural grants. While this Annual Report lays out in detail KIAS’s manifold activities over the course of the year, I would like to highlight here some noteworthy achievements. 2011-2012 marked the inauguration of the Kule Dialogues Program through which KIAS-supported researchers disseminate their findings to the university and broader communities. KIAS also continued its leadership in the advancement of undergraduate research through the launching of its Masterclass Series. Further, KIAS’s international profile was extended through liaison and the development of strategic partnerships between KIAS and KIAS-supported researchers, and distinguished counterparts in China, South Asia, Australia, and Germany. As my two-year term as KIAS’s Founding Director now draws to a close, I wish to express my profound gratitude to all members of KIAS’s three governing bodies for their support of KIAS and of me personally. I am particularly grateful to the Chair of the KIAS Administrative Board, Carl Amrhein, and the Chair of the KIAS Advisory Council, Ernie Ingles, for their stewardship of these important groups. Additionally, I thank Lesley Cormack, Dean of Arts, for her support of KIAS’s research mission. Further, I am grateful to KIAS Executive Manager Gillian Edwards and the members of the KIAS Research Committee for their invaluable advice to me, and for their unalloyed commitment to KIAS’s growing family of researchers. Finally, I wish to register my abiding and profound respect and affection for Drs. Peter and Doris Kule whose deep humanitarian values undergird their visionary philanthropy in the endowing of KIAS. I am pleased to inform KIAS’s many communities that the state of Institute is strong, and that KIAS is well-placed to continue to meet its strategic mandate in the years to come: Advancing Humanity, Lifting the Human Spirit.
Jerry A. Varsava June 29, 2012 Founding Director, KIAS Edmonton
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KIAS GOVERNANCE BODIES, 2011-2012 ADMINISTRATIVE BOARD
The Administrative Board determines the research themes and topics to be explored, approves the KIAS annual budget and annual report, provides strategic advice and guidance to the Academic Director on academic and research focus, and advances the KIAS mandate through effective advocacy.
Chair: Carl Amrhein, Provost & Vice-President (Academic)
Philip Bryden, Dean of Law Lesley Cormack, Dean of Arts Gillian Edwards, Executive Manager, KIAS Ernie Ingles, Vice-Provost & Chief Librarian David Marples, Director, Stasiuk Program Andriy Nahachewsky, Director, Ukrainian Folklore Centre Geoffrey Rockwell, Director, Canadian Institute for Research in Computing and the Arts Mazi Shirvani, Vice-Provost & Dean of Graduate Studies & Research Jerry Varsava, Founding Director, KIAS
ADVISORY COUNCIL
The Advisory Council considers ideas and recommendations from the Research Committee on research themes and topics to be examined, provides advice to the KIAS Administrative Board on these themes and topics, and provides advice to the Administrative Board on ways and means for KIAS to best realize its mandate.
Chair: Ernie Ingles, Vice-Provost & Chief Librarian
Vic Adamowicz, Professor, Resource Economics & Environmental Sociology Lesley Cormack, Dean of Arts Gillian Edwards, Executive Manager, KIAS Sean Gouglas, Director, Office of Interdisciplinary Studies Andrew Hladyshevsky, Partner, Fraser Milner Casgrain, LLP Gordon Houlden, Director, The China Institute Zenon Kohut, Director, Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Natalie Kononenko, Kule Chair, Modern Languages & Cultural Studies Irena Makaryk, Vice-Dean, Graduate & Postdoctoral Studies, University of Ottawa Bohdan Medwidsky, Professor Emeritus, Modern Languages & Cultural Studies Most Reverend David Motiuk, Bishop of Eparchy of Edmonton Roman Petryshyn, Director, Ukrainian Resource Development Centre, Grant MacEwan University Rick Szostak, Professor, Economics Jerry Varsava, Founding Director, KIAS
RESEARCH COMMITTEE
The Research Committee submits ideas and recommendations to the Advisory Council on research themes and topics to be examined by the research and intellectual exchange sponsored by KIAS. The Research Committee adjudicates applications for all grant programs, advises the Academic Director on design and implementation on programs and promotional activities and, advances the KIAS mandate through effective advocacy.
Chair: Jerry Varsava, Founding Director, KIAS
Gillian Edwards, Executive Manager, KIAS Ingrid Johnston, Associate Dean, Graduate Studies & Research Leonard Ratzlaff, Professor, Music Imre Szeman, Canada Research Chair, English & Film Studies Benjamin V. Tucker, Assistant Professor, Linguistics
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KIAS RESEARCH THEMES, 2011-2013
Through its many programs, KIAS supports socially-engaged, transformative research of the highest quality across three broad thematic areas. Outlined below, these three themes were identified through a pan-campus consultation of students, faculty, and research administrators in 2010, and guide all of KIAS’s activities over the course of its first three-year research cycle (2011-2013).
STEWARDSHIP OF THE PLANET Ethically informed stewardship of the planet can be pursued from a number of points of view and in a variety of contexts, but there is an urgency to examine the issue now, and to propose tenable responses to this challenge. Phenomena like global population growth, climate change, and heightened environmental risk call out for the attention of socially-engaged researchers today.
PLACE, BELONGING & OTHERNESS There is a foundational human concern to understand one’s place in, not only the physical world, but also in the social spaces in which we move, and to which we may feel affinity or distance. The theme of Place, Belonging, and Otherness encourages an examination of a broad range of relationships in order to better understand the human social condition, whether in the early twenty-first century or at antecedent historical points.
CULTURE, MEDIA, TECHNOLOGY In an age saturated with new technologies and a proliferation of representational media, there is a need to reconsider both traditional forms of cultural expression and new ones enabled by technological advancement. This topic encourages an engagement of the imaginative, material, and social conditions of arts’ production and reception.
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TOMORROW’S IDEAS, NOW KIAS’s second annual international interdisciplinary undergraduate conference, “Tomorrow’s Ideas, Now,” will take place in August 2012, and will be fully detailed in next year’s Annual Report. The 2012 Conference will build on the achievements of the 2011 iteration. In 2012, abstract submissions increased by over sixty percent, and the number of presenters will grow considerably. Substantial cohorts of presenters are expected from two globally recognized universities, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) and the University of Sydney. Two keynotes will again be delivered, one by a distinguished U of Alberta professor, the other by an undergraduate student from Britain. In 2012, KIAS welcomes a number of partners to the enterprise, including the Office of the Dean of Students, the Undergraduate Research Initiative (URI), and SSHRC. “Tomorrow’s Ideas, Now” confirms the position of KIAS and the University of Alberta as leaders in the promotion of undergraduate research excellence, both across our campus and internationally.
Canada
Ukraine
United Kingdom
United States
Australia
Norway
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Mexico
The Netherlands
New Zealand
RESEARCH CLUSTER GRANTS Piet Defraeye, Drama, Faculty of Arts The representation of genocide There has been considerable production of discourse that has to do with chronicling, remembering and responding to genocide-related events, like the Holocaust and more recent genocides like the Bosnian, or Rwandese massacres. Multiple decades later, we are still struggling with formats and contents that can render the impact and the enormity of these events on our cultural memories. The proposed research is twofold. A creative project involves the staging of Raymond Federmand’s experimental text The Voice in the Closet, which deals with the arrest by the Gestapo and disappearance of both his parents and two sisters in early 1945, when he was 12 years old, witnessed through the keyhole of a closet door, behind which he was hiding. The second part is a critical project, and involves the publication of a series of critical articles, or an edited volume, on the issue of representation and cultural discourse that deals with genocidal violence and trauma.
Maureen Engel, English & Film Studies, Faculty of Arts Edmonton Pipelines: Maps and Narratives for Dense Urban Spaces Edmonton Pipelines is a collection of digital maps and literary provocations by four collaborators: Heather Zwicker, Daniel Laforest, Maureen Engel and Russell Cobb. We use the site-appropriate term “pipelines” (Edmonton is an oil city) to stand for methods of channeling understanding through dense city space. We operate as a collaboratory, and several distinct projects are germinating under the Pipelines rubric -- some are high-tech, some are low-tech; some are primarily cartographic, some are primarily narrative; some deal with the city centre, some with the suburbs. What each pipeline shares, however, is a desire to construct interactive digital frameworks that contextualize and historicize the “space” of Edmonton, creating interwoven visual, cartographic, and narrative renderings of our complex urban landscape. Find us at edmontonpipelines.org.
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RESEARCH CLUSTER GRANTS Eddy Kent, English & Film Studies, Faculty of Arts Cosmopolity The Cosmopolity project studies the economic, historical, and social dimensions of cosmopolitanism. As globalization enters into a moment of crisis, we ask what is the hope for a world citizenship? From climate change, debt, energy security, environmental disasters, terrorism, transnational social movements, the events that lead our nightly newscasts and drive policy demand a global perspective. In the twentieth century, our response sought solutions through formal institutions of international governance, like the UN, the International Criminal Court, or the World Bank. Today, these hopes have faded and our collective responses to our global realities are often more provisional, improvisational, and contingent. The Cosmopolity project focuses on these new world politics: to identify principal actors, contesting ideologies, and competing rhetorics. We seek to unite researchers working on the problems of the moment – such as international migration, sovereign debt, and corporate social responsibility – with those studying related issues of the past – including slavery, industrial capitalism, and corporate imperialism.
Stefano Muneroni, Drama, Faculty of Arts Translating and Performing the Post 9/11 Mexican-American Border In recent years, the political rhetoric in the U.S. has constructed the Mexican-American border as a problematic space that must be fortified to protect Americans from illegal immigration, drugs, violence, and even terrorism. At the same time, it has shaped “special” spaces along the border to celebrate the long friendship between the two countries. Both rhetorical stances present a limited understanding of the border and ignore the complex human experience and its effect in shaping the border landscape. This KIAS project wants to deconstruct these conflicting and reductive images of the border through the investigation of a body of dramatic and literary works written about the MexicanAmerican border in the last fifteen years that debunk the political rhetoric of the U.S. government. These works portray the border as permeable, open to both social interactions and negotiations of cultural differences, and capable of suggesting alternative solutions to the exclusionary politics of the U.S. The research team will also focus on how these works function as critical tools to denounce both binational policies and NAFTA as responsible for labor exploitation, social discrimination, and the horrific murders of Mexican women in border cities. As part of the research, and in close collaboration with graduate students from MLCS and the Department of Drama, the team will also translate a heterogeneous selection of “border texts” from Spanish into English and weave them into two theatrical pieces that will receive full staged readings here at the University.
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RESEARCH CLUSTER GRANTS Jan Selman, Drama, Faculty of Arts Old Stories in New Ways Creating, Co-Creating and Re-Creating Old Stories in New Ways for an Emerging World. Canadian and East African artists and researchers will work collaboratively to collect and adapt stories, and create interdisciplinary performance that is also socially meaningful in contemporary East African contexts. This foundation project will forge strong partnerships, develop collaborative ways of working, source old, possibly nearly lost stories and adapt some of them with and for contemporary audiences. Grappling with the challenges of intercultural creation and the tendency for “meaningful art” and “applied theatre” to miss some of the potential powers of performance, stories of cultural significance will be adapted to create contemporary, resonant and culturally grounded story performances.
Makere Stewart-Harawira, Educational Policy Studies, Education Indigenous Communities as Stewards of Mother Earth: Responding to the Triple Crisis of Sustainability In a time of unparalleled crisis, described by the United Nations as a ‘triple crisis of sustainability’ because of the interrelated crises of the environment, of food security, and of the global economy, Indigenous knowledge and customary practices of sustainability are increasingly being recognized as having a major role to play in managing, mitigating and where possible, preventing, the environmental crisis which is impacting across all arenas of human wellbeing. This project directly addresses this triple crisis. In partnership with Indigenous communities, this project aims to:
• Identify locally-grounded traditional knowledge and
customary practices which inform the prevention, mitigation and reversal of ongoing losses of biodiversity, water scarcity and contamination, and adaptation measures to extreme climate change, particularly in the context of the expansion of extractive resource development; • Identify barriers to the exercise and implementation of such knowledge and practices; • Explore culturally-appropriate, effective and dialogically-based solutions to such barriers; • Explore and understand the implications of traditional Indigenous knowledges, principles, and practices in the development of a new global imaginary for sustainable social and economic development, based on the maximization of planetary wellbeing. *for full descriptions of KIAS programs, please visit www.kias.ualberta.ca
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RESEARCH CLUSTER COLLABORATION The Research Cluster Grant program brings innovation to the traditional research grant model by adding a second grant, available only to Cluster PIs, which enables them to create an external collaboration that expands their project. The External Collaboration Grant provides matching funding for the Cluster PI to work with another researcher at an institution outside of the University of Alberta. KIAS’s first full year of Research Clusters has given the University of Alberta research community support for excellent research opportunities for collaborative, interdisciplinary teams. KIAS uses partnerships that the University of Alberta has cultivated, such as the Worldwide Universities Network (WUN), and also helps Cluster PIs make initial connections at new institutions, in order to establish the best partnership possible for their research.
Justus Liebig Universität Giessen Dr. Sheena Wilson
The Petrocultures Research Cluster and the International Graduate Centre for the Study of Culture (GCSC) at Justus Liebig University in Gießen are co-organizing a two-day intensive workshop on “Culture, Energy, Ecology” January 17th and 18th, 2013. In addition to providing an occasion for sharing the individual research of students and faculty from both institutions, the aim of the workshop is to establish a common research agenda between the two institutions that will form the basis for a future, multi-year joint research project on issues emerging at the conjunction of culture, energy and ecology.
LIRNEasia
Dr. Gordon Gow LIRNEAsia is a well established independent organization in Sri Lanka that carries out a range of research projects to examine the social and economic impact of information and communication technologies in the Asia Pacific region. The University of Alberta is collaborating with researchers in Sri Lanka to study the potential of new information and communication technologies to support sustainable agricultural practices. An interdisciplinary research team from Faculties of Extension and Agriculture, Life Sciences, and Environment is working closely with researchers at the LIRNEasia research institute in Sri Lanka to develop a research partnership that aims to improve knowledge mobilization for sustainable agricultural practices in developing countries.
University of Western Sydney Dr. David Kahane
With KIAS funding, five University of Alberta researchers from across disciplines have been exploring case studies of environmental consultation in Alberta. A collaboration grant is allowing them to hold an innovative learning event to deepen their analysis. A team in Sydney, Australia is bringing together leading researchers and practitioners of democratic engagement to look at citizen and stakeholder roles, and the advantages of different ways of combining these. The KIAS team will bring together a similar group in Edmonton. Each group will come into the workshop having read a working paper and reflected on questions about their own research and practice experience. Through work at each site and videoconferencing across sites, this group of thought and practice leaders will develop an analysis that contributes to further research, and provides guidance for the burgeoning field of public involvement on environmental issues.
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INTERDISCIPLINARY COURSE SEMINAR AWARDS Joan Greer, Art & Design, Faculty of Arts Van Gogh Up Close: Religion and Science in Late Nineteenth-Century Images of Nature This senior undergraduate and graduate level, research-intensive seminar will examine images of nature in the art of Vincent Van Gogh. The works in the exhibition Van Gogh Up Close (National Gallery of Canada) will serve as both a focus and a point of departure for studying this imagery and related works by other artists. Van Gogh’s works are complex, being informed on a fundamental level by the artist’s exceptionally in depth understanding of past and present art and art theory, accompanied by an insider’s knowledge of the art market. They also, however, engage significantly with numerous other areas, notably, in relation to representations of nature, with those associate with “religion”, on the one hand, and “science”, on the other, with both terms construed broadly. These three areas - art, religion and science - will form the backbone of enquiries into representations of nature carried out through the close examination of the writings, drawings and paintings of Van Gogh.
photo: National Gallery of Canada
Van Gogh, Irises, 1889
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INTERDISCIPLINARY COURSE SEMINAR AWARDS Guy Thompson, History & Classics, Faculty of Arts ‘Engaging’ Material Culture: Beyond Agency. Imperial Arts, Architecture and Religions Studies of material culture represent an emerging area of scholarly interest, with new theories of object agency, embodiment, display and seeing opening up questions about the interactions between objects, human bodies and the interfaces of identity, cultural practice, and social ideology. This course will introduce graduate students to important recent work on the roles of material culture in imperial contexts, primarily ancient Rome, the British Empire, and the fascist states in Europe. It will pay particular attention to the dynamics of art, architecture, and monuments in their interaction with religious practices and human bodies. This course will also introduce students to contemporary social theorists whose reflection of identities to consider how physical objects and bodies shape identity, ideology, and culture. Further, it will investigate how research traditions in the different disciplines have shaped and constrained scholarship.
Jennifer Hsu, Political Science, Faculty of Arts China in the World: Society and Politics In the advent of China’s potential rise as a world power, the nation’s domestic and foreign policy decisions are increasingly having a global impact. This course will examine China’s ascent within the framework of contemporary social, political and economic developments. The ascendancy of China in the global arena leads us to many questions including: What is the meaning of China’s place on the world stage and how it is constructed? What are the social, political and economic forces driving China’s ascendancy? The course will cover some of the key events that have shaped China since 1949, including the tensions of economic reform and its impact on current state-society relations. The two underlying working theses throughout the course is to ascertain whether or not China’s development efforts will ultimately lead to 1) political reforms and, 2) a global power that challenges and supplants existing stakeholders.
*for full descriptions of KIAS programs, please visit www.kias.ualberta.ca
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INTERDISCIPLINARY COURSE SEMINARS “The course was particularly useful for challenging me to think in a different way and to see the world from a different perspective.”
“This class brought
together a very diverse group of students with different backgrounds and that really expanded my conception of what sound
art could be. We touched on a range of topics including music history, technology, video game sound tracks, sculpture, and classical composition techniques that really
stretched our theoretical lens on the subject and make me think quite differently about the biases I came into this class with.”
“I was continually encouraged and inspired to apply the various theories encountered to my own mode of practice and to continue to delve for meaning.”
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INTERDISCIPLINARY COURSE SEMINARS “I wanted to do some creative work and because I have some background in making art, it
gave me an opportunity to take a course outside of my own department in
a Fine Arts area but also related to some of the issues and theory etc. that I had already been studying in other courses. And it was such an interesting and diverse group too!”
“I’ve taken many courses in my own discipline, and often end of up having the same conversations over and over again. I thought it would be refreshing to get a different perspective.”
“There’s no doubt in my mind that much of my future artistic production will be tied to and informed by theoretical and philosophical work and in this regard I was strongly influenced by the interdisciplinary nature of this course. For my thesis work I will now be able to reference the literature I was exposed to in this class as a way to give a conceptual and theoretical dimension to the multimedia work I will be producing.”
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KIAS POSTDOCTORAL FELLOWS Marcia Ostashewski, Music, Faculty of Arts
Ukrainian music, dance and culture in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia
Shannon Stunden Bower, History & Classics, Faculty of Arts The Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Administration as a Low Modernist Agency
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KIAS POSTDOCTORAL FELLOWS
Victor Taki, History & Classics, Faculty of Arts
Tsar and Sultan: The Ottoman Empire under Russian Eyes
Terri Tomsky, English & Film Studies, Faculty of Arts Abject Cosmopolitans: Global Relations in the Age of Terror
*for full descriptions of KIAS programs, please visit www.kias.ualberta.ca
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KIAS DOCTORAL SCHOLARS Marianne Clark, Faculty of Physical Education & Recreation
The dance studio as a site of self construction: Understanding how girls who dance in commercial dance studios construct the self through the dancing body.
Sandra Joy Friesen, Music, Faculty of Arts Formalization of Twentieth-Century Piano Technique and Notation Exemplified in Canadian Compositions
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KIAS DOCTORAL SCHOLARS Lianne Michelle Lefsrud, Strategic Management & Organization, Alberta School of Business
Language Matters: Stakeholders’ consequential rhetoric in defining Alberta’s oil sands
Dee Patriquin, Faculty of Physical Education & Recreation
Influence of Place, Social Capital and other Factors on Collaborative Action in Sustainable Management
*for full descriptions of KIAS programs, please visit www.kias.ualberta.ca
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KULE DIALOGUES The Kule Dialogues Program brings the research programming at KIAS full-circle. Through it, investigators showcase their work to the broader community, through interesting events, conferences, performances, or presentations. These are open to the public, the University of Alberta community including staff and students, and the KIAS family. KIAS provides funding and logistical support for the preparation and implementation of each Dialogue - one of which must be carried out by each grant winner. 2011-2012 was the first year of Kule Dialogues and we look forward to many more!
Sound in the Arts Symposium
The Kule Dialogues Program allowed Professor Smallwood to host the Sound in the Arts Symposium, that featured the research of the students in the course. This gave them an opportunity to present their findings to their peers, as well as other members of the University of Alberta’s research community. Topics included spoken word art, Japanese post-war aesthetics in sound, and sound sculpture.
photo: Gillian Edwards
Art & Posthumanism
The Kule Dialogue for Dr. Whiteman’s Interdisciplinary Course Seminar Grant allowed students from her course to participate in a posthumanism-focused panel at the 5th annual graduate conference in comparative literature at the University of Alberta: Coordinates of Comparison. The conference featured a theme of Remappings/Rereadings: Global Dialogues Between East, West, North, South, fitting in perfectly with KIAS’s own Place, Belonging, and Otherness research theme.
photo: Suzan Masoud
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KULE DIALOGUES Kule Dialogues: Uncensored Showcase and Celebration
Based on the first Research Cluster to be completed, this Kule Dialogue welcomed members of the collaborative team that Dr. Diane Conrad worked with during the course of her research, members of the KIAS governance bodies, KIAS grant winners, as well as the youths that participated in her Uncensored Program. The youths filmed and edited a video that discussed the Uncensored Program and the impact that it had on their lives. The youths also performed a dramatic scene for the audience and answered questions from guests. One of the outcomes for the youths involved was the Uncensored logo, which was a collaborative project for the group and is now featured on t-shirts for the program.
photos: Gillian Edwards
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KIAS MASTERCLASS: undergraduate research series “I went into these sessions without knowing anything about the topics. I found the sessions were really informative and easy to follow.”
In Fall 2011, KIAS launched a series of workshops targeted at the undergraduate research community in the social science, humanities, and fine arts. The KIAS Masterclasses brought some of the best faculty members face-to-face with a limited group of new researchers, to explain the various components of research to them and how to be successful at it. The sessions discussed the conference abstract, the research paper, fieldwork and interviewing, and the conference presentation, with lots of time for questions and discussion. Undergraduates were given a free lunch and plenty of information. In addition to the conference components workshops, KIAS partnered with the Undergraduate Research Initiative (URI) and CAPS: Your U of A Career Centre to host a workshop on how to apply one’s work after graduation, whether it be for graduate school or for the workplace. Dr. Jerry Varsava (KIAS and Comparative Literature), Dr. Roger Graves (English & Film Studies, Writing Across the Curriculum), Dr. Natalie Kononenko (MLCS), and Dr. Cressida Heyes (Canada Research Chair, Philosophy) led the first year of Masterclasses for KIAS, along with Alexis Lockwood (URI) and Sharon Sherman (CAPS). We look forward to bringing these back to the students in 2012-2013!
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EXTERNAL RELATIONS
It is the mandate of KIAS to establish itself as a globally recognized leader in socially engaged, impactful interdisciplinary research in the humanities, social sciences and the fine arts. To that end, Director Varsava undertook missions in 2011-2012 to profile the institute and to explore prospects for collaborations with preferred partners, notably various members of the Worldwide Universities Network (WUN). In November 2011, Director Varsava traveled to China for meetings at two WUN member institutions, Nanjing University and Zhejiang University, while also visiting Fudan University. The meetings with colleagues at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences (IAS) at Nanjing University were particularly productive, and led to the successful negotiation of a Faculty Exchange Agreement between KIAS and IAS. In 2012, KIAS became an affiliated member of the European Consortium for Humanities Institutes and Centers (ECHIC), and the Director attended the 2012 Annual Conference at ECHIC in Utrecht in February. While in Europe, he visited WUN member-institution, University of Bergen. Further, Director Varsava and Executive Manager Gillian Edwards attended the 2012 Annual Meeting of the Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes (CHCI) in Canberra in June. In 2012, KIAS joined the CHCI/ACLS Fellowship Residencies Partnership that affords fellows supported by the American Council of Learned Societies to take up their awards at KIAS. Through its external research collaboration grants, KIAS facilitated the formation of research teams involving its cluster-grant principal investigators and researchers at, variously, the University of Western Sydney, Justus-Liebig-Universität (Giessen, Germany), and LIRNEAsia, a think-tank located in Colombo, Sri Lanka; these external research teams are examining such major issues as environmental stewardship, the social and political effects of energy production, and the use of technology in sustainable farming practices. KIAS was also delighted that Professor Gordon Gow successfully leveraged his 2011 Cluster Research Grant, and received a 2012 SSHRC Partnership Development Grant. Another important external relationship was forged closer to home. SSHRC expressed interest in KIAS’s promotion of undergraduate research excellence, and came on board as a sponsor for the 2012 “Tomorrow’s Ideas, Now” conference; SSHRC will be sending an observer to the conference to learn more about best practices in the promotion of undergraduate research. In summary, the various external activities undertaken served to highlight KIAS’s core research mandate, while at the same time working to identify areas of possible cooperation and collaboration. The embracing of undergraduate research excellence was particularly striking, with a number of institutions stepping forward with commitments to provide financial assistance to its students to attend the 2012 “Tomorrow’s Ideas, Now” Conference. While much remains to be done, KIAS has, over the course of its short history, made major strides in establishing its profile globally and is, with determination, assuming its place within the global constellation of elite counterpart institutions.
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IN THE COMMUNITY
2012 KIAS Postdoctoral Fellows and Doctoral Scholars, meeting for the first time in the Faculty Lounge, Old Arts Building.
Kathryn Orydzuk volunteering with the KIAS & Collective Body for Arts Students Arts Cafe, February 9, 2012.
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IN THE COMMUNITY
Masterclass attendees working on writing a research paper, led by Dr. Roger Graves on October 25, 2012.
KIAS-sponsored research at the Coordinates of Comparison conference on the University of Alberta campus.
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WEB PRESENCE & ANALYTICS In the past year, KIAS has continued its strong web presence, through its website, Facebook page, Twitter account, and blog. The website remains the strongest place for information from KIAS, as well as the official source of grant deadlines, forms, announcements, and so forth. The KIAS Facebook page has allowed the institute to reach a new group of students who may not have heard about the institute otherwise. There is also a strong following from the first cohort of “Tomorrow’s Ideas, Now” students, who created a group to follow each other’s research after their time together at the conference in August 2011. Since August 21, 2011, KIAS has doubled the number of visits to the site and has continued to reach new countries around the world.
Overview of Traffic
from August 21, 2011 until June 21, 2012
Visits 9,832 Pageviews 34,848 Direct Traffic 40.95% New Visitors 65.76%
Global Reach The top countries visiting the KIAS website illustrate the impact that the institute is having internationally and the strong partnerships that KIAS has with partner institutions to the University of Alberta and the Worldwide Universities Network (WUN). 1. Canada 2. United States 3. Mexico 4. Australia 5. United Kingdom 6. Ukraine 7. Norway 8. India 9. China 10. South Korea
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OUR FOUNDING BENEFACTORS Drs. Peter and Doris Kule are two outstanding Canadian philanthropists, visionaries, and community leaders who have given most generously in support of post-secondary education and research. Through their donations, they have touched the lives of many professors and students at the University of Alberta and elsewhere. In 2005, the University of Alberta awarded honourary doctorates to Peter and Doris Kule in recognition of their many contributions to the community and to the University of ALberta. Drs. Peter and Doris Kule have provided the founding endowment for the Kule Institute for Advanced Study, which was established on July 1, 2010. The Kules’ beliefs and principles are reflected in the mission and vision of the Kule Institute for Advanced Study, which seeks to enhance the understanding of complex and pressing issues through interdisciplinary research in the Humanities, Social Sciences, and Fine Arts. KIAS and the researcher community it serves are greatly indebted to the Kules, and will strive to advance society and global polity in a manner consistent with their high humanitarian ideals.
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The Kule Institute for Advanced Study is an interdisciplinary and comparative research institute that fosters an innovative intellectual environment for the study of major modern and historical, political, social, economic and cultural issues and, therein, advances society and global polity in a manner consistent with the high humanitarian ideals of the founding benefactors, Drs. Peter and Doris Kule.
The Kule Institute for Advanced Study (KIAS) 3-22 Arts & Convocation Hall University of Alberta Edmonton, Canada T6G 2E6 www.kias.ualberta.ca | kias@ualberta.ca