For more than 50 years, the Royal Canadian Geographical Society has contributed to growing geographical understanding of Canada – its people, places, culture, environment and economic challenges – by funding research to broaden Canadians’ knowledge and appreciation of Canada.
As one of the oldest organizations in Canada funding geographical research, our research grants and scholarships have enabled students to pursue their passion for geography, sometimes leading to ground-breaking results. This much-needed support has also helped launch the careers of Canada’s brightest minds in geography.
For 2021, we’ve chosen to fund four graduate research scholarships, one independent research grant, one James Bourque Northern Doctoral scholarship and one James Maxwell Human Geography scholarship. The range of disciplines represented by the recipients reflects geography’s broad reach and importance of applying geographical methods and technologies, to better understand our landscapes, environment, and sustainable human interaction.
Graduate Scholarships
Kaylee Baxter, University of Calgary
Pursuing a Master of Arts in Archaeology
Supervised by Dr. Matthew Walls, University of Calgary
Kaylee Baxter will be assisting in two projects run as part of a larger initiative, the Activating Arctic Heritage project. Activating Arctic Heritage (AAH) is a joint project supported by the National Museum of Denmark and the Greenland National Museum and Archives and funded by the Carlsberg Foundation. It is aimed at exploring the UNESCO World Heritage Regions of Aasivissuit-Nipisat (West Greenland) and Kujataa (South Greenland).
The work will take place in the Kujataa area, which is a subarctic farming landscape with histories of Norse settlers and later Inuit farming communities written across (and just below) its surface. The Kujataa farming landscape is evidence of the earliest introduction of farming to the Arctic. AAH investigates a variety of themes related to the archaeology and present and future management of these UNESCO World Heritage sites. An integral principle of the AAH project is the co-creation of knowledge and engagement with local stakeholders, communities and heritage managers in the UNESCO areas the projects take place in.
Lauren Eckert, University of Victoria
Pursuing a PhD in Geography
Supervised by Dr. Chris Darimont, Applied Conservation Science Lab, University of Victoria
Human pressure on Earth has resulted in unprecedented environmental degradation. Conservation interventions intended to protect ecosystems increasingly come into conflict with other human activities – resulting in tense conflict between stakeholders, communities, and species. These seemingly intractable ‘conservation conflicts’ generate consequences for humans and wildlife alike – and undermine conservation efforts.
Conservation Conflict Transformation (CCT) is a set of processes and principles that have emerged as strategies to respond to, and overcome, conflict. CCT forwards that conflict can only be transformed when deep-rooted components (e.g. human values, identities, and relationships between involved parties) are understood alongside superficial aspects of conflict (e.g. disagreements over management decisions). Eckert’s doctoral research mobilizes CCT to examine conservation conflict in Canada and pursues opportunities for coexistence across communities and scales.
Katie Goodwin, University of British Columbia
Pursuing a PhD in Botany
Supervised by Amy L. Angert, PhD; Canada Research Chair in Conservation Ecology; Associate Professor, Departments of Botany and Zoology
Understanding what shapes species’ ranges and how they may respond to climate change is a fundamental question for Canadian biogeographers. Climate change is expected to cause species’ ranges to simultaneously contract at low elevations and expand into higher elevations. However, the extent that climate shapes species’ ranges remains unclear and biotic interactions, such as herbivory, may alter climate-induced range shifts.
Goodwin aims to determine how climate and herbivory impact population dynamics to shape the elevational range of broadleaf lupine (Lupinus latifolius). She will combine field experiments manipulating temperature, water availability, and herbivore access of plants with population models to determine how these factors impact population growth across the range (i.e., where they are most limiting for the species’ distribution). By incorporating biotic interactions into her climate study, Goodwin’s findings will provide valuable insights into how species’ geographic distributions will shift in Canada’s mountain ecosystems with ongoing climate change.
Katelyn O’Keefe, University of Calgary
Pursuing a Master of Arts in Archaeology
Supervised by Dr. Peter Dawson, University of Calgary
The heritage features at Pauline Cove (on Qikiqtaruk — Herschel Island), Yukon, include Inuvialuit sod houses and buildings from the whaling industry, fur trade, missionaries, and NWMP. Coastal erosion and flooding associated with climate change are altering Pauline Cove and damaging these features.
O’Keefe’s research aims to comprehend the impact these processes are having through two approaches. First, 2017 and 2019 aerial imagery of Pauline Cove will be compared using visual inspection and change detection analysis using open-source software. This analysis will elucidate the impact of flooding and erosion on the landscape and the main settlement area. The imagery analysis is complemented by the excavation of two damaged sod houses. Results will be compared to previously excavated (intact) sod houses.
Together, these methods will yield an understanding of climate change’s impact on Pauline Cove and its heritage while generating broadly applicable, low-cost procedures for monitoring heritage sites across the Arctic.
Independent Research Grant
David Lawless
Caves, Cedars, and Climate Change: Uncovering Paleoclimate Records through Ancient Speleogenesis and Old-Growth Forests in Fathom Five National Marine Park
This research study will seek to better understand how our climate is changing based on analyzing Paleoclimate records of the ancient caves and old-growth eastern white cedar trees of Bears Rump Island, a nationally significant wilderness in Fathom Five National Marine Park.
Through an analysis of rare cave deposits and tree ring data, Lawless will help provide a clearer picture of how climate change is accelerating in the Great Lakes basin over thousands of years. Ultimately, this project will elucidate the regional, provincial, and national significance of Fathom Five and the park’s role as an indicator of anthropogenic climate change.
James Bourque Northern Doctoral Scholarship
Robert Vranich, University of Alberta
Pursuing a PhD in Kinesiology, Sport and Recreation
Supervised by Dr. Zac Robinson and Dr. Liza Piper, University of Calgary
Landscapes are as much about culture as they are about physical nature. Culture has a way of preceding and shaping the nature that we delude ourselves into thinking we can experience directly. In other words, culture mediates our interactions with the natural world and provides the
interpretive framework that allows us to understand what an interaction with nature means.
Vranich’s doctoral research focuses on the cultural lenses through which outdoor recreationists view, interpret, and understand the natural world. These lenses comprise the assumptions, stories, biases, traditions, prejudices, and preferences we bring with us when we travel, and they are the primary means by which we make sense of the landscapes, people, and cultures we encounter while away from home.
Broadly speaking, his research examines the historical development of these cultural lenses and how they have guided interactions with recreational, wilderness, and heritage landscapes in Canada. More specifically, Vranich’s research examines the historical and cultural development of one of Canada’s most iconic wilderness landscapes, the South Nahanni River in the Northwest Territories.
James Maxwell Human Geography Scholarship
Katarina Djordjevic, University of Manitoba
Pursuing a Master of Arts in Geography
Supervised by Dr. Jonathan Peyton, University of Manitoba
In the era of the climate crisis, hydroelectricity has been heralded as a point of change – as a clean, green, and renewable energy. Yet hydro-developments have historically produced profound socio-political and environment implications that cascade over time. This research on hydro-developments in Manitoba will investigate their impacts on northern Indigenous communities and environments.
Djordevic’s research asks what histories do Manitoba’s hydro-structures (re)produce, using three keystone Manitoba Hydro projects to trace historical and contemporary development behaviour, practices, and impacts and to examine power geometries underlying northern hydropower developments. The aim is to bring Manitoba’s hydro-developments into dialogue with literature on the politics of hydropower and colonialism, and to contribute to scholarship that analyzes how infrastructure reproduces political geographies and materializes historical injustices.
