Ongoing research led by Professor Sandra Lapointe (McMaster) examines the current state of community-focused SSHA knowledge mobilization, understood broadly enough to include all aspects of scholarly activity that rests on direct interactions with community partners, including but not limited to nonprofits and municipal government
Phase 1 of the project consists in a scoping scan of university websites that leverages digital humanities methods to produce a provisional inventory of activities and initiatives that pertain to community-focused knowledge mobilization in university- based SSHA. The data gathered through the scan in Phase 1 will inform, in Phase 2, a survey and interviews designed for a deeper qualitative analysis of the current state of community-focused knowledge mobilization practices in Canadian SSHA. The ultimate objective is to produce an analytic framework designed for use by those whose task it is to support, incentivize, recognize and reward the activities of SSHA researchers, devise strategies and policies that support social and human research, or to administer funding programs to increase the impact of SSHA in the social innovation ecosystem.
