Congratulations to Dr. Julia Bullard on receiving 2019-2020 SSHRC Insight Development Grants for her research ‘Subject description from the margins: Indigenous and Canadian scholarship‘.
This project will foreground Indigenous and Canadian scholarship and research topics in how we understand subject description in information studies. When a system such as a list of subject headings matches the expectations of the community of users, the system becomes invisible. Users cease to notice its operation and take for granted the role it plays in their research and writing. When a minority of the user community is misrepresented and their views distorted by the system, they become invisible and the work by and about that community is harder to find and easier to miss. Looking at these systems from the margins, particularly from Indigenous and Canadian scholarship, we see distortion in the world view asserted by these centralized systems. This project seeks to examine this distortion and to ask how does this distortion change how we describe our work, find the work of others, and understand the subjects of Indigenous and Canadian scholarship.
Tha Insight Development Grants support research in its early stages. They enable the development of new research questions, as well as experimentation with new methods, theoretical approaches or ideas. Funding is provided to individuals or teams for projects of up to two years.
See the SSHRC full announcement
Employment opportunity for students
Dr. Bullard is currently looking for a student who will read extensively through lists of updates of subject headings, identify terms of relevance to Indigenous and Canadian topics, and find items catalogued with various forms of those terms.
In 2021, there will be different roles for Masters students in this project that prioritize research readiness (for those considering PhD programs) and career readiness (for those considering librarianship). These positions will involve participant management (contact, scheduling) and qualitative methods (piloting interviews, data management, transcribing interviews, preliminary analysis). If you are interested, please contact Dr. Julia Bullard (julia.bullard@ubc.ca) to discuss any of these upcoming positions.
