Sometimes academic life can be a long slog, with little validation for our efforts except, perhaps, from those (rare) students who take the time and effort to let their professors know how much they enjoyed a particular course. Tenure and promotion, of course, are key times for reflection and assessment, and, if successful, reveal both internal (institutional) and external (expert reviewers) approval of a particular professor’s research, teaching, and service accomplishments.

We shouldn’t, perhaps, need institutional or external validation to feel satisfaction in our work. Yet, it’s part of the job. So, I must say that I’m very pleased to announce that my “44 Lenin Avenue” project has received another major external grant, this time a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) Insight Grant, valued at $55,000 over three years. Given that Insight Grant applications first need institutional approval, and then are judged at SSHRC by a panel of accomplished scholars (multiple disciplines) and external reviewers (experts on the specific subject), this grant not only gives me the opportunity to complete my research on the project and to hire multiple student researchers, but it represents a validation of the project as a whole, and my work on it to date.

The research office at Thompson Rivers University issued a brief article on the Insight Grant and Insight Development Grant winners, and you can also find a full list of Insight Grant recipients on SSHRC’s website. It is an honour to be included among so many great researchers and projects. For help with the application itself, I’d especially like to thank Anita Sharma at the TRU research office, and Tina Block, a great history colleague at TRU. And, of course, I’m very grateful to SSHRC and the reviewers of my application.

A couple of other very brief research notes:

  1. I’ve started my position as Visiting Researcher at the Department of History, Dalhousie University… the first stop on my sabbatical. While here, I’ll be researching and writing on the “44 Lenin Avenue” project. I will also have the opportunity to present on this project at the history department’s Stokes’ Seminar Series in September. I majored in history and Russian studies at King’s/Dalhousie, so this was where it all began.
  2. I also received my official acceptance as Visiting Scholar at L’Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS) in Paris. I’ll be there in May 2020, and will deliver a series of lectures on the “44 Lenin Avenue” project, and will also be able to conduct research in a community that includes many of France’s top experts on Russia and the former Soviet Union.