Initiatives

SSHRC Insight Grant (2023-2027)

Understanding personal and public sense making in response to the climate crisis (2023-2027) is a multi-year project to investigate and support collective sensemaking in communities in response to the climate crisis. The project team is partnering with public libraries in 3 communities in British Columbia.

• Principal Investigator: Luanne Sinnamon
• Co-Principal Investigator: Lisa Nathan

SSHRC Partnership Development Grant (2024-2027)

Developing a Community for Community-Centred Vocabulary Work (3CV), is a multi-year collaboration which seeks to build connections between unique community-led and centred libraries and archives doing innovative work in knowledge organization.

• Principal Investigator: Julia Bullard

SSHRC Partnership Grant (2021-2026)

A multi-national interdisciplinary project aiming to design, develop, and leverage artificial intelligence to support the ongoing availability and accessibility of trustworthy public records by forming a sustainable, ongoing partnership producing original research and training students and other highly qualified personnel.

• Principal Investigator: Dr. Luciana Duranti
• Co-Directors: Dr. Luciana Duranti and Dr. Muhammad Abdul-Mageed
• Associated iSchool faculty: Dr. Jennifer Douglas, Dr. Richard Arias-Hernández, Dr. Victoria Lemieux

SSHRC Insight Grants (2021-2025)

This project critically engages the concept of multimodal anthropology from a decolonial perspective. Since 2018, this team of interdisciplinary scholars, artists and curators have collaborated to support artist Jaad Kuujus (Meghann O'Brien) (Haida-Kwakwaka'wakw) in creative exploration of digital imaging to support the return of her original woven artwork, Sky Blanket, from circulation in contemporary art contexts back to her community for ceremony. Through our close collaboration in digital imaging and 3D scanning, we produced a model and animation of Sky Blanket called Wrapped in the Cloud so that the artwork could be present in two contexts at the same time--the digital animation of the blanket in the gallery and the physical blanket in community. Wrapped in the Cloud helps to show Sky Blanket's connections to Haida and Kwakwaka'wakw origin stories, material qualities of mountain goat wool, and relationships between data infrastructures and land-based practices.

• Co-applicant: Dr. Hannah Turner

UBC Indigenous Strategic Initiatives Grant (2025-2027)

This project will renew relationships and build connections to upgrade an innovative, but aging, cultural heritage research platform: The Reciprocal Research Network (RRN, rrncommunity.org). The RRN is a ground-breaking digital research platform co-developed from 2006-2010 by the Museum of Anthropology, Musqueam Indian Band, Stó-lō Nation and Tribal Council and the U’mista Cultural Centre. This project revisit our understandings about the platform and will plan for future developments based on an evaluation of existing strengths, changing needs and new opportunities. We seek to understand what communities need now from institutional repositories to transform digital cultural research tools. Over 2 years, we will develop a broad community-based working group to understand: How can UBC uphold Indigenous data sovereignty in museum and heritage spaces? What emerging tools and technologies on campus can help to meet community needs now?

Co-Investigators: Susan Rowley (MOA), Hannah Turner (UBC iSchool), Gerry Lawson (MOA), and Alissa Cherry (MOA), Leona Sparrow (Musqueam), Dave Schaepe (Stó-lō Nation and Tribal Council), Juanita Johnson (U’mista cultural centre).