University of Manitoba
AC-10: Support for Sustainability Research

The Experience Research Program for Undergraduate Students:
Professors at the University of Manitoba, through their research, scholarly work and creative activities are contributing to the cultural, economic, health and social well-being of the citizens of Manitoba, Canada, and the world. Professors work individually or in teams to analyze challenging and complex issues to make lives better and more meaningful. This program allows students to be mentored full-time with a professor of their choice for 16 weeks, to receive a $7,000.00 award, and to gain valuable experience in their field of interest. There are 172 Undergraduate Research Awards (URAs) available across all disciplines, up to 10% of which are dedicated to self-declared Indigenous students, and two awards are earmarked for community-based research projects within the Social Sciences and Humanities including the Critical Environments Research Group (CERG) program.

Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) Strategic Partnership Grants:
The objective of the NSERC Strategic Partnership Grants is to increase research and training in targeted areas that could strongly influence Canada's economy, society and/or environment within the next ten years. NSERC will fund the direct costs of a three-year project including students, post-docs, consumables, and equipment for research in Advance Manufacturing, Environment and Agriculture, Information and Communications Technologies, Natural Resource and Energy, Sciences.

Syngenta Graduate Scholarship:
Syngenta Graduate Scholarship is for a student enrolled full-time in Agricultural and Food Sciences at the University of Manitoba conducting research in sustainable agriculture. The areas included are environmental quality and resource management, integrated pest management, the introduction of new technologies, economic viability and rural community sustainability. The award is a total endowment of $200,000.

Critical Environments Research Group:
The Critical Environments Research Group (CERG), is an interdisciplinary cohort of scholars all working in the environmental humanities at the University of Manitoba, with affiliated faculty at the University of Winnipeg. CERG aims to foster a unique venue for collaboration and scholarly support around the environmental humanities in western Canada. The mandate is to promote increased research and teaching collaborations that bring together critical scholarly perspectives on environmental sustainability, equity, and justice. Scholars involved with CERG share the conviction that the environment cannot be understood as a standalone category; instead, scholarship is oriented around the notion that the environment should be analysed as a set of relations, encompassing economic, social, political, cultural, legal, and health frames as well. Work is all around the common theme of human-environment relations but brings different disciplinary and analytical backgrounds to the conversation.

Education for Sustainable Well-Being Research Group:
The Education for Sustainable Well-Being Research Group is an interdisciplinary research group of the University of Manitoba, housed in the Faculty of Education. The research program of the research group consists of the commitment to undertake research that focuses on issues linked to education for sustainable well-being. Research projects as part of this research program are concerned with education as a means for human and societal development for sustainable well-being. The group organizes conferences and symposiums to develop interests, knowledge and skills in relation to sustainable well-being research. The main objectives of the Education for Sustainable Well-Being Research Group are: To develop and engage in a collaborative interdisciplinary research program on the role and the possibilities that education as a means for human and societal development for sustainable well-being; To promote and support undergraduate and graduate education and research in the area of education for sustainable well-being; and to enhance the education for sustainable well-being of all humans with a focus on Manitoba and Canada.

University of Manitoba Success Through Wellness Grants:
The University of Manitoba’s Success Through Wellness Grants have been created to fund projects that engage the campus community to foster positive mental health and wellbeing and create a supportive campus environment through new initiatives (e.g. activities, events, projects, applied research proposals) or enhancements to existing supports with a proven track record. Proposals should be clearly aligned with one or more of the six goals articulated in Success Through Wellness, which represents a call to action for all members of the University. Awards are valued up to $10,000. All members of the community, staff, faculty or students, are eligible to apply.

Indigenous Initiatives Fund:
The University of Manitoba’s Indigenous Initiatives Fund supports unit-based projects that advance the Indigenous achievement and engagement goals as stated in Our Shared Future: Building on our Strategic Plan. Faculties, schools, colleges, libraries and administrative units are invited to submit proposals to the fund. Since 2016, the fund has accepted applications annually, with the most recent intake being in February 2022. In 2021-22, $430,419 was allocated to 13 projects. The projects were in the departments of anthropology, native studies, engineering, kinesiology, music, health sciences, and science.

Co-operative research currently takes place in several research units at the University through formal or informal arrangements made by individuals to facilitate the sharing of research efforts between departments/units. To facilitate such interdisciplinary research and to enable the contributions of scholars and researchers who are not faculty members at the University of Manitoba, the Adjunct Professor Policy was created. Furthermore, the University of Manitoba's Promotion and Tenure Policies assess performance in research based on collaboration.

The Centre for Human Rights Research also seeks proposals from the University of Manitoba faculty members who want to explore new collaborative interdisciplinary research projects. Priority is given to pre-tenured faculty and to research projects that fit in one of the following focus areas:
-Indian residential schools & truth and reconciliation
-Sexual and reproductive rights
-Human right to water and food
-Documenting human rights

The Centre is supporting work on implementing the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, by organizing a national academic forum in 2019 and an online expert seminar in 2021 on the human rights of Indigenous peoples. The Centre is also a part of a team that is analyzing why so few criminal sexual assault complaints result in convictions. Dr Annette Desmarais, Canada Research Chair in Human Rights, Social Justice and Food Sovereignty, conducts participatory research with member organizations of the transnational Via Campesina agrarian movement. Desmarais chaired a panel discussion in 2021 on the new UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants. The Centre hosted an event in December 2020 called Commemoration Matters: History, Human Rights and the Politics of Commemoration.

The University of Manitoba MSpace Open Access Repository has a Sustainability subject group for Graduate Research Theses and Dissertations as well as a Sustainable Agriculture subject group for Research Publications. UM researchers can also browse electronic journals by subject, including Earth and Environmental Science, through the BrowZine Library repository.

https://umanitoba.ca/faculties/arts/departments/humanities/rclusters/3641.html
https://www.eswbrg.org/about-the-eswbrg.html
https://chrr.info/
https://umanitoba.ca/indigenous/reconciliation/indigenous-initiatives-fund
https://umanitoba.ca/research/opportunities-support/undergraduate-research-awards
https://umanitoba.ca/faculties/afs/awards/awardsPDF/TOR_Syngenta_Graduate_Scholarship.pdf