(Ottawa, June 29, 2006) – The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) announced today that Trent University political studies professor Miriam Smith has been awarded the 2006 Bora Laskin Fellowship to study the impact of Charter rights on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) politics.
Granted annually by SSHRC, the Bora Laskin National Fellowship in Human Rights Research was established in 1985 to honour the late chief justice of the Supreme Court of Canada. The prestigious 12-month, $55,000 fellowship is awarded to a leading Canadian researcher in the field of human rights.
“No one has gained more legal recognition from section 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms—the section devoted to equality rights—than lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Canadians,” says Smith, who, in addition to her role at Trent, is a research associate at the University of Toronto’s Sexual Diversity Studies Centre. “I want to find out what difference that has made for political organizing and community development, and whether a new culture of activism has emerged as a result.”
Smith’s previous research found that the fight for legal rights in the last two decades had made lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender organizations less radical. For one thing, the battle was led by lawyers, traditionally a relatively conservative group. For another, success meant inclusion in the mainstream. “People now feel more accepted,” she says, “so they don’t feel they have to agree on every issue.”
The question Smith wants to answer is whether the high-profile struggle for same-sex marriage and similar rights has undermined a thriving grassroots political culture.
With the SSHRC funding, Smith will conduct research in Vancouver, Montreal, Halifax and Toronto. In each city, she will interview activists in three kinds of LGBT groups—youth, ethno-cultural and professional—that represent a range of political orientations.
“It’s important to know what’s really going on here in Canada,” says the researcher, whose multi-disciplinary approach combines political science with law, sociology and urban geography. “We tend to assume social patterns here are pretty much the same as in the U.S. and elsewhere—but that’s just not the case.”
And though many would see her area of study as being radical, Smith points out that she is, in fact, asking traditional political science questions: what impact does law have on society? What effect do political institutions have on social movements?
To answer those questions, she says, “we need to hear people’s real stories, not just high theory."
“The Bora Laskin Fellowship demonstrates the value SSHRC places on human rights research,” said SSHRC Interim President Stan Shapson. “It’s vitally important that we support that research and recognize the best people in the field. Professor Smith’s work will add a new dimension to our understanding of the Canadian reality.”
For additional information on this release and other SSHRC research projects, please contact:
Susan Goodyear
Media Relations Officer
Telephone: (613) 947-4629
E-mail: susan.goodyear@sshrc.ca
