St. Thomas members awarded research grants

Four members of the St. Thomas community recently received significant research grants.

Gerontology professor Dr. Deborah van den Hoonaard, Gayle MacDonald of the Sociology department, director of Criminology Susan Reid-MacNevin, and Sheila Laidlaw of the Third Age Centre will accept grants for their respective projects.

The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) announced that Dr. van den Hoonaard will receive $23,022 over three years for the publication of her forthcoming book By Himself: The Older Man’s Transition to Widowhood.

Ms. Laidlaw of the Third Age Centre, located on the St. Thomas University campus, has received a research grant of $40,000 from the National Crime Prevention Centre, Community Mobilization Program. $15,000 will renew and upgrade the Centre’s Senior Educators Enhancing Community Safety Programme, while $25,000 will create an equivalent French programme, including two training workshops for French presenters.

Dr. Gayle MacDonald was awarded $58,816 over three years for her study entitled “Prostitution in the Atlantic Provinces: Policies and Perceptions.” Dr. Leslie Jeffrey, of the University of New Brunswick in Saint John, is collaborating with Dr. MacDonald on the study which investigates the sex trade in the Maritimes. A book releasing their findings will be published with Routledge Press in January, 2003.

“This study will be beneficial because to date there has only been one comprehensive study on the sex-trade in the Maritimes, which was in the late 1980s,” Dr. MacDonald says.

The National Crime Prevention Centre, through its Community Mobilization Program, awarded $38,140 to Dr. Reid-MacNevin for Phase II of her “Beyond the Halls: Building Safe and Healthy School Environments” project.

Phase I detailed New Brunswick students’ perceptions of safety and violence in their respective high schools.

“These projects are beneficial because they address the ongoing issues related to youth justice beyond the current preoccupation of the public rhetoric of ‘get tough’ strategies,” Dr. Reid-MacNevin says. “The projects also focus on the necessity of considering the views of young people in terms of their own feelings of vulnerability within their communities.”