UVic grad students awarded Pacific Leaders fellowships

Four UVic graduate students are among the ten chosen by the provincial government to receive prestigious fellowships to support their research into key issues affecting British Columbia and to work in the BC public service upon receipt of their degree.

Receiving Pacific Leaders Graduate Student Fellowships are Lianne Charlie (history), Amber Risha Mitchell (dispute resolution), Lois Stewart (sociology) and Aijun Yang (statistics). Each will receive $20,000 per year for up to two years and will be employed in the public service for at least the same length of time.

They were selected among applicants from the province's four research-intensive universities (UVic, SFU, UBC and UNBC). Requirements include a minimum A- average over the past two years of full-time study in a program 75 per cent of which involves research on public service or policy issues in areas where government is facing skill shortages.

Lianne Charlie is in her second year of a master's degree in history, studying the historical and ethnographic contributions of Indigenous community specialist Annie York (Nlaka'pamux) of Spuzzum, BC. "York has contributed enormously to the cultural history of the region through her work with linguists, ethnobotanists, historians, anthropologists and others," says Charlie. She has received little recognition, though these collaborations have resulted in several monographs, films and book chapters. "York is still considered an 'ethnographic assistant,' 'informant,' and 'storyteller' rather than a historian in her own right," Charlie explains. An important element of Charlie's research will focus on the tensions between written and oral tradition in the making of prominent historiographies.

Amber Mitchell, a first-year master's student in dispute resolution, is studying the integration of addiction and mental health services and the nature of collaboration across numerous disciplines and professions that is needed in order to achieve effective integration. This will lead to recommendations on how best to support such collaboration among professionals in the health sector and, more widely, in such other areas as environmental management, community engagement and Indigenous relations.

Sociology PhD student Lois Stewart is researching the relations between institutional citizen participation, measured by voter turnout, and extra-institutional participation, indicated by the prevalence of public protests and demonstrations. By studying trends in Canada, the US, the UK and France from 1857 to 2007, she hopes to discern whether the noted decline in voter turnout correlates with a similar decrease in participation in social movements or whether there has been a shift in the mode of political participation away from electoral involvement and into social activism.

Aijun Yang, in her fourth year of a master's in statistics program, is researching geographical patterns of mortality for Qu&e#180;bec patients after a heart attack. Her work will help identify whether there is a gender difference in survival time after revascularization (restoration of the blood supply) and whether geographical differences in the accessibility of health care affect survival after heart attack. Her results will help health care system planners make better decisions on such issues as physician allocation and hospital performance.