Tag Archives: knowledge mobilization

UVic 2022 “Pathways to Impact” Grant: Eric Higgs

 UVic’s “Pathways to Impact” fund aims to move original research that aligns with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and move it into real-world applications for greatest impact. The fund is a partnership between UVic’s Research Partnerships and Knowledge Mobilization (RPKM) unit and UVic Libraries. Funded projects will make their research openly accessible, including via UVicSpace, contributing to the democratization of knowledge and knowledge equity. The inaugural UVic fund is one of a few institutionally led knowledge-mobilization funding initiatives across Canadian research universities and among the first to directly target the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.

Sentinels of change: Rising treelines and raising knowledge.

UVic researchers address cultural, ecological and environmental urgency behind the Mountain Legacy Project.

UN Sustainable Development Goals: 6, 13, 14 and 15

Among the seven projects that were selected for the 2022 Pathways to Impact fund is Sentinels of change: Rising treelines and raising knowledge, led by Prof. Eric Higgs, a professor at the School of Environmental Studies (Faculty of Social Sciences) at the University of Victoria. The research project uses historical photographs from the Canadian Rocky Mountains to analyze tree line change over the last century. The results will be applied to discuss the effects of climate change on such ecosystems and possible practical implications. The funded project is part of the Mountain Legacy Project.

Besides an article in Scientific Reports, an open access journal by reputable academic publisher Nature…

Trant, A., Higgs, E., & Starzomski, B. M. (2020). A century of high elevation ecosystem change in the Canadian Rocky Mountains. Scientific Reports, 10(1), Art. 1. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-66277-2

…an episode of the appraised podcast Future Ecologies was recently published in connection with the project:

“In a forgotten corner of a national archive, some very heavy boxes held a rare promise: an opportunity to look back in time at a landscape scale.”

Listen to the episode here.

Find a list of achievements and publications by Prof. Higgs on his website and on his ORCiD profile.

UVic Libraries congratulates Professor Higgs and his team on the successful application and their valuable research contribution to the fulfillment of the United Nations’ SDGs.

Mt. Assiniboine and Magog Lake: A. O. Wheeler, 1913 & Mary Sanseverino, 2017Mt. Assiniboine and Magog Lake: A. O. Wheeler, 1913 & Mary Sanseverino, 2017

Mobilize Your Knowledge!: An Introduction to Creating Open Textbooks using Pressbooks

Presenter: Liam McParland (University of Victoria)

Are you a UVic faculty member who is interested in creating/adapting and disseminating accessible educational resources? This workshop will introduce you to Pressbooks – an open source, online authoring and publishing platform.

By the end of the workshop, you will be able to:

    • Create and build an e-text
  • Create accessible headings, tables, and footnotes
  • Insert accessible media into your material

When: Wednesday, December 7, 2022
Time: 2:30pm – 3:30pm (Pacific Time – US & Canada)

This is an online event. Event URL will be sent via registration email.

UVic’s 2022 “Pathways to Impact” Grant: Caetano Dorea

UVic’s “Pathways to Impact” fund aims to move original research that aligns with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and move it into real-world applications for greatest impact. The fund is a partnership between UVic’s Research Partnerships and Knowledge Mobilization (RPKM) unit and UVic Libraries. Funded projects will make their research openly accessible, including via UVicSpace, contributing to the democratization of knowledge and knowledge equity. The inaugural UVic fund is one of a few institutionally led knowledge-mobilization funding initiatives across Canadian research universities and among the first to directly target the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.

A prospective cohort study of access to safe drinking water in Malawi – Community dissemination and engagement

UN Sustainable Development Goals: 3, 6, and 17

Among the seven projects that were selected for the 2022 Pathways to Impact fund is
A prospective cohort study of access to safe drinking water in Malawi, the summary of the doctoral research of Dr. Alexandra Cassivi – supervised by Dr. Caetano Dorea.

Dr. Cassivi’s research potential was recognized in 2020 with a Green Talents award. She is now a Postdoctoral Fellow at Université Laval. Dr. Dorea is a professor at the Department of Civil Engineering, Faculty of Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Victoria, research group leader of the Public Health & Environmental Engineering (PH2E) Lab, and the director of the NSERC CREATE in Water & Sanitation for Low-Resource Contexts (#WASHCanada) project.

This research project is dedicated to exploring access to safe drinking water and sanitation for diverse populations in Malawi. It is hoped that the findings can be applied globally to make recommendations for assessing and monitoring access to water, particularly for low- and middle-income countries.

The following articles were published in connection with the project so far:

  • Cassivi, A., Tilley, E., Waygood, E. O. D., & Dorea, C. (2020). Trends in access to water and sanitation in Malawi: Progress and inequalities (1992–2017). Journal of Water and Health, 18(5), 785–797. https://doi.org/10.2166/wh.2020.069
  • Cassivi, A., Tilley, E., Waygood, E. O. D., & Dorea, C. (2021a). Evaluating self-reported measures and alternatives to monitor access to drinking water: A case study in Malawi. Science of The Total Environment, 750, 141516. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.141516
  • Cassivi, A., Tilley, E., Waygood, E. O. D., & Dorea, C. (2021b). Household practices in accessing drinking water and post collection contamination: A seasonal cohort study in Malawi. Water Research, 189, 116607. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.watres.2020.116607
  • Cassivi, A., Tilley, E., Waygood, O., & Dorea, C. (2021c). Seasonal Preferences and Alternatives for Domestic Water Sources: A Prospective Cohort Study in Malawi. ACS ES&T Water, 1(6), 1464–1473. https://doi.org/10.1021/acsestwater.1c00045

Dr. Cassivi’s doctoral thesis, on which this project is based, is available in UVicSpace:

Find a full list of achievements and publications by Dr. Caetano Dorea here and those of Dr. Cassivi here.

UVic Libraries congratulates Professor Dorea, Dr. Cassivi, and the rest of their team on the successful application and their valuable research contribution to the fulfillment of the United Nations’ SDGs.

UVic 2022 “Pathways to Impact” Grant: Dr. Megan Ames

Canadian mapping of Autism-specific supports for postsecondary students

UN Sustainable Development Goals: 3, 4, and 10

The Pathways to Impact fund is a partnership between the Office of UVic’s Research Partnerships and Knowledge Mobilization (RPKM) unit and UVic Libraries. Its aim is to move original research into real-world applications for greatest impact. The funded research projects align with and advance UVic’s commitment to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which are a set of goals that “encompass equity issues for humanity—reducing poverty, hunger, and inequality—along with sustainability issues that imperil the globe’s habitability.

Among the seven projects that were selected for the 2022 Pathways to Impact fund is the  Canadian mapping of Autism-specific supports for postsecondary students by Dr. Megan Ames (University of Victoria) and Carly McMorris (University of Calgary).

Dr. Megan Ames is an assistant professor at the Department of Psychology, Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Victoria. Her research–the topic of the funded research project is outlined as follows:

“Prospective post-secondary students with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and their parents often spend an extensive amount of time researching potential schools and supports. CFYS research fellow Dr. Megan Ames and Dr. Carly McMorris from the University of Calgary have conducted an environmental scan of the websites of all public post-secondary institutions in Canada looking for support provisions. Out of over 250 institutions, only 6% listed at least one support specific to students with ASD. The team is hoping to make this list publicly available in the near future.”

The following article was published in connection with the project:

Ames, M. E., Coombs, C. E. M., Duerksen, K. N., Vincent, J., & McMorris, C. A. (2022). Canadian mapping of autism-specific supports for postsecondary students. Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders, 90, 101899. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rasd.2021.101899

Funded projects will make their research openly accessible, including via UVicSpace, contributing to the larger conversation around the democratization of knowledge and the role that higher education institutions play in contributing to knowledge equity.

The inaugural UVic fund is one of a few institutionally led knowledge-mobilization funding initiatives across Canadian research universities and among the first to directly target the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.

Find list of other articles published by Dr. Ames here.

UVic Libraries congratulates Dr. Ames and Dr. McMorris on their successful application and their valuable research contribution to the fulfillment of the United Nations’ SDGs.

TK Labels: Tool for Indigenous Peoples to assert sovereignty over traditional knowledges

Logo for the International Day of the World's Indigenous Peoples

Source: https://indigenousknowledge.unimelb.edu.au

August 9 marks the International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples, an annual celebration of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which was adopted in 2007. It is an opportunity to highlight the significant contribution that Indigenous Peoples have made to our world and it serves as a reminder to reaffirm everyone’s commitment to advancing the rights of Indigenous Peoples and to working together to address the challenges they still face around the world.

This celebratory blog post is dedicated to Traditional Knowledge Labels (TK Labels) – a framework for preserving Indigenous knowledges in digital environments. It will outline how the system works and discuss how it can be helpful in scholarly work.

1.   What are TK Labels?

Traditional Knowledge Labels (TK Labels) is a digital tagging system developed by the Local Contexts initiative in partnership with Indigenous communities worldwide to recognize, categorize, and acknowledge traditional knowledges of Indigenous Peoples and their contexts and regulate how and by whom that intellectual property can be used. Together with other tools such as Local Context’s BC Labels, GIDA’s CARE Principles, or the Mukurtu Content Management System (CMS), they ensure the cultural sovereignty of Indigenous peoples worldwide.

2.   What can TK Labels add to existing frameworks regulating intellectual property?

TK labels appear to be akin to statutory copyright and trademark law. Yet they were developed because legal concepts of regulating intellectual property are often at odds with how traditional knowledge is passed on, shared, and exercised. Copyright laws have been exploited many times to appropriate Indigenous knowledges and traditional cultural expressions, including by the scientific community.

Instead, the concept of TK labels is loosely inspired by Creative Commons (CC) licenses. CC licenses form another labeling system, that is intended to complement copyright by offering a more general framework for sharing intellectual property. But TK labels are more elaborate than Creative Commons and designed to provide a holistic perspective on the context in which traditional knowledges and Indigenous cultural heritages live. They can, for example, show provenance and specify protocols that should be applied when using the knowledge and they can be customized to serve local contexts. TK labels also contrast with Creative Commons because the open philosophy of which these licenses are a component is not in harmony with indigenous traditions of learning, teaching, and knowing.

Although not legally binding, TK labels create a safe space for traditional manifestations of intellectual property and their contexts that existing copyright laws generally cannot capture and legislate.

3.  How do TK Labels help protect Indigenous Knowledges and promote Indigenous cultural sovereignty?

Currently 20 different TK Labels help to raise awareness of Indigenous knowledges and their interrelationships. Labeling traditional knowledges that exist in digital environments makes them more recognizable. By contextualizing them with the help of TK Labels, knowledge-keepers can decide to provide clarity, depth, and meaning to audiences outside of their communities. As a result, these labels can prevent misappropriation by making clear where the knowledge and teachings originate and in what way their usage is authorized. This can encourage future use, foster their preservation and prevent undesirable or illegitimate applications. It is the exercise and sometimes the restitution of control over their dissemination. TK Labels help to repatriate sovereignty over knowledges and cultural expressions, that have been torn from their ancestral settings. And not least, they can encourage engagement with the inherent nature of Indigenous knowledge traditions and lead to a deeper understanding of them.

An image of 12 different TK Labels and their meaning

Examples of different TK Labels and their meanings. Source: Local Contexts and https://blogs.ubc.ca/etec523/2021/10/02/traditional-knowledge-and-the-commons/

4. What role TK Labels can play in indigenizing digital scholarship

TK labels offer an opportunity to improve the social impact of digital scholarship by promoting decolonization and indigenization. As more non-Indigenous researchers turn to traditional knowledge to solve societal problems to which Western science cannot find sufficient answers, such as wildlife conservation or the life-threatening effects of the climate crisis, it is increasingly important that this knowledge be used appropriately, respectfully, and in harmony with its bearers. TK labels can provide a framework for this use. With TK Labels, global Indigenous communities have an additional tool in their hands with which they can gain recognition for knowledges and cultural practices that have been considered a common good by the scientific community for centuries and have thus been appropriated without acknowledgement of their sources. Now these communities can claim it on their own terms.

5. How students, researchers and academic institutions can implement TK Labels in their learning, teaching, research and heritage work

The labels themselves can only be applied by Indigenous communities. Researchers and educators as well as academic and heritage institutions (archives, museums, libraries) who would like to refer to traditional knowledges in their works or in collections they host can apply a TK notice to them by registering their projects or collections in the Local Contexts Hub. That will notify Indigenous communities of potential Indigenous rights and interests in their publications, data or holdings, who can then decide if and which labels to apply to those projects. 

An important application relevant to scholarly and preservation work that includes the TK Labels is the Mukurtu CMS for building digital collections that contain manifestations of Indigenous cultural practices and traditional teachings. Learn more about how TK Labels are implemented into Mukurtu here.

Further Reading on Indigenous Knowledges

A special issue of UVic’s open access journal KULA: Knowledge Creation, Dissemination, and Preservation Studies has been dedicated to Indigenous Knowledges in 2021.

Pathways to Impact: Mobilizing Knowledge

The Pathways to Impact: Mobilizing Knowledge Fund aims to support researchers in mobilizing knowledge and creativity for greater impact. A joint initiative of the Office of the Vice-President Research and Innovation’s Research Partnerships and Knowledge Mobilization (RPKM) Unit, in partnership with UVic Libraries, the fund supports UVic’s commitment to meeting the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Many exceptional applications were received in the Fall 2021 call for proposals, and seven outstanding projects were selected for funding: Learn more about the Pathways to Impact projects.

UVic Libraries provides many supports for mobilizing your research and creative projects ranging from workshops, equipment loans, and self-help resources to full suite of digital services for grant-funded research. Explore some of our offerings below or contact us for more!

Pathways to Impact: Mobilizing Knowledge Fund

September 28, 2021

The Research Partnerships and Knowledge Mobilization unit (RPKM), in partnership with UVic Libraries, are pleased to announce a one-time opportunity to request funding for innovative mobilization of research knowledge and outputs, with the aim of increasing their impact.

The purpose of the Fund is to assist researchers in mobilizing knowledge and creativity in support of UVic’s commitment to meeting the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals.

  • Value: up to $3,500. Total funding envelope is $20,000
  • Application deadline: 23:59 on November 15th, 2021
  • Notification of decision: December 15th, 2021

All full-time UVic faculty members are eligible. Early career scholars are encouraged to apply. Open to individual faculty members and research teams. Only one application per applicant/team will be considered. Please see further eligibility requirements in the Guidelines.