New scholarship announced for PhD‑level research in FASS

Each year, the Dalhousie Institute on Society and Culture (DISC) hosts Cross-Currents Seminars — engaging panel discussions featuring experts from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds.

The first of these seminars, held on Thursday, February 4, featured a special announcement from Provost and Vice-President Academic Carolyn Watters about the establishment of the new Special Provost-Alumni Scholarships for the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences.

The four new scholarships guarantee a minimum $20,000 per year for four years, including a teaching assistantship or equivalent, and will help FASS be more competitive in its offers to exemplary applicants to its eight doctoral programs.

Supporting grad students

Dr. Watters explained that both the Faculty of Graduate Studies and the Provost’s Office were concerned that the incoming cohort of PhD students to FASS this year was very small — not from a lack of interested and well-qualified candidates, but because our offers were not competitive on a national scale.

“PhD students and our commitment to high quality research and education in FASS go hand-in-hand,” said Dr. Watters. “These scholarships are one way for FASS to be more competitive in attracting great PhD students and restore the vibrancy of its long-standing PhD programs. We are very proud of our graduates, so let’s pull together as a community of alumni, students, and faculty to support them while they are here.”

The scholarships are funded through the Faculty of Graduate Studies (FGS), the Provost’s Office and FASS. The hope they will be expanded in subsequent years through alumni donations.

“We would like the Arts and Social Sciences [community] to know that the faculty supports them and is a part of their mission,” said Dr. Watters.

Julia M. Wright, associate dean research for FASS, thanked FGS and the provost for their support.

“Our doctoral students are key contributors not only to FASS research but also to the educational experience of our undergraduate students because of their work as highly qualified teaching assistants and instructors,” she said. “These new scholarships are an important acknowledgment of the vital parts doctoral students play in FASS’s academic mission.”

Left-to-right: Brandi Estey-Burtt, Tonya Katherine Canning and John Mitton.

The announcement was followed by presentations from three of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences’ current PhD candidates. The theme of the year’s first Cross-Currents Seminar was “Creed, Currency, and Credibility,” examining responses to social concerns through literature, economics, and politics.

Brandi Estey-Burtt (English) presented "When the Messiah Comes: Rethinking Religion in 21st-Century Literature,” examining spirituality, social justice and other contemporary concerns, particularly in a recent novel by Nobel Laureate J. M. Coetzee. Tonya Katherine Canning (Sociology & Social Anthropology) presented “Economic Empowerment or Shell Game?: Ethnographic Analysis of a Local Currency System,” tracing the uses of local currency systems as alternatives to national currency and comparing the communities’ aspirations for these local currencies to their experiences using them. And John Mitton (Political Science) presented "Selling Schelling Short: Reputations and American Coercive Diplomacy After Syria,” examining the theoretical debate over the relative impact of political reputations versus present circumstances (such as interests, balance of power) in international negotiations.

The next Cross-Currents Seminar is scheduled for Thursday, February 25th, 11:30 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. in Rowe 1016, and will also feature three FASS PhD candidates, this time around the theme “Contact Zones”:

• Anas Atakora (French) “Tourism and places of memory in ‘The shadow of things to come’ of Kossi Efoui”
• Katie Stockdale (Philosophy), “The Social and Political Dimensions of Hope”
  
• Sinziana Chira (Sociology & Social Anthropology), “Feeling at home?: International students negotiating diversity on the Atlantic Canadian campus”
  

All are welcome. To learn more about the Cross-Currents Seminars, visit their website. More information about the Special Provost-Alumni Scholarships can be found on the FASS website.