Team Research Project Grants

Every year, the Religion and Diversity Project allocates grants to support the work of its team members and students. Consult the documents below to learn more about the research projects funded.

Strand 1 – Religious Identity

• Team Member: Michael Wilkinson
• Project: “Views of Diversity in a Korean Congregation: A Follow-up Study”
• Project aims: In 2017, this research will seek to revisit the congregation, administer the survey in the English-speaking and Korean-speaking worship gatherings, interview the Pastor (who is still leading the congregation), make some observations, and conduct a focus group with participants to discuss issues about religious diversity and viewpoints about non-Christian religions in Toronto.
• Project results: Please click here to read the project report.

Strand 1 – Religious Identity

• Team Member: Paul Bramadat
• Project: “Cascadian Spirituality: Religion, Nature, and Social Inclusion in the Pacific Northwest.”
• Project aims: This project – which lays the groundwork for a major team project – will collect and assess the various sources of empirical and theoretical data available in order to initiate a thorough account of Cascadian religion and its relationship with the social and political realities of the region.
• Project results: Please click here to read the project report.

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• Team Members: Peter Beyer
• Project: “A Web-based Survey Instrument on Religious Identity (IV): Longitudinal and Contemporary Case Study”
• Project aims: To apply the web-based survey instrument on religious identity which had initially been developed in the context of the three previous projects (2011-2012, 2012- 2013 & 2013-2014) funded through the Religion and Diversity Project.
• Project results: Please click here to read the project report.

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• Team Member: Christopher Helland
• Project: “Mediating the Tibet Resettlement Project in Canada: An Assessment of the Impact of New Media on Religion and Diversity.”
• Project aims: This will be an original research project, addressing an issue that has not yet been examined in detail by those exploring the role of social media and religious diversity. This research will also determine how “mass media” and various news media were used by the Tibetan community to support and promote their cause.
• Project results: Please click here to read the project report.

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• Team Member: Solange Lefebvre
• Project: “Radicalisation et contre/dé-radicalisation : une analyse des politiques publiques et de débats médiatiques au Québec et au Canada.”
• Project aims: To analyse public policies and media debates related to the radicalisation and anti-deradicalisation in Québec and in Canada.
• Project results: Please click here to read the project report.

Strand 3 – Sexuality and Gender

• Team Member: Rebecca Johnson
• Project: “‘Skirting the Issue’: Indigenous Questions of Fundamentalism and Clothing at the Intersection of Gender, Sexuality, and Religion.”
• Project aims: In this collaboration we will explore challenges for indigenous women as gender and sexuality are negotiated on the terrain of spirituality and religion. We will take as our focus questions related to Clothing.  In particular, “the skirt” and pressures on indigenous women around the skirt, especially in the context of (religious/spiritual) ceremony.
• Project results: Please click here to read the project report. To read the, “Gender Inside Indigenous Law Casebook,” click here. To read the, “Gender Inside Indigenous Law Toolkit,” click here.

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• Team Member: Pamela Dickey-Young
  
• Project: “Religion, Gender and Sexuality among Youth in Canada”
• Project aims: The main goal of this study is to explore the constructions and management strategies undertaken by young adults (aged 18-25) concerning their religious and sexual identities, values, and choices
• Project results: Please click here to read the project report. To read the Final Project Report, click here.

Strand 4 – Alternative Strategies

• Team Member: Rukhsana Ahmed
• Project: “Religion and Organ Donation: Knowledge and Attitudes toward Organ and Tissue Donation and Transplantation among Christians Living in Canada.”
• Project aims: The main goal of this proposed research is to investigate the role of religion in organ donation. Specifically, it aims to explore what and how Christians living in Canada know and feel about organ and tissue donation and transplantation.
• Project results: Please click here to read the project report.

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• Team Member: Barbara Thériault
• Project: “La religion en miniature : chroniques radiophoniques.”
• Project aims: This project builds on the work that was carried out as part of the fieldwork in prison to create a series of radio interviews.
• Project results: Please click here to read the project report.

Strand 3 – Sexuality and Gender

• Team Member: Pascale Fournier
• Project: “Le sécularisme et les femmes de minorité religieuse”
• Project aims: To contribute to the study of secularism and its effect on women through a collaborative publication with the researcher Jacques Berlinerblau.
• Project results: Please click here to read the project report.

Strand 4 – Alternative Strategies

• Team Member: Pamela Klassen
• Project: “Digital Dissemination, Story Nations: Media and Missionaries on Indian Land”
• Project aims: To develop a website focused on digital storytelling and interactive maps with visual and audio components
• Project results: Please click here to read the project report.

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• Team Member: Barbara Thériault
• Project: “La religion en miniature: de la prison à la maison de transition”
• Project aims: To primarily explore religion in halfway houses and the importance of this context.
• Project results: Please click here to read the project report.

Strand 1 – Religious Identity

• Team Member: Christopher Helland
• Project: “Religion in the Media: An International Comparison”
• Project aims: To examine religious representation in the media at the regional/local, national, and international/transnational level.
• Project results: Please click here to read the project report.

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• Team Members: Michael Wilkinson and Samuel Reimer
• Project: “Christian Churches and Immigration: Integration and Identity”
• Project aims: To examine the response of Christian churches to the increasingly diverse immigrant reality in their communities.
• Project results: Please click here to read the project report.

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• Team Members: Peter Beyer
• Project: “Web-based Survey on Religious Identity (III): Application through Case Studies”
• Project aims: To apply the web-based survey instrument on religious identity which had initially been developed in the context of the two previous projects (2011-2012 & 2012-2013) funded through the Religion and Diversity Project.
• Project results: Please click here to read the project report.

Strand 3 – Sexuality and Gender

• Team Member: Pascale Fournier
• Project: “La médiation familiale et le droit religieux au Liban : regards du droit et voix des femmes”
• Project aims: To examine the eventual impact of family meditation on the status of women within the Lebanese religious rights context.
• Project results: Please click here to read the project report.

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• Team Member: Nancy Nason-Clark
• Project: “Religion and Diversity in the Classroom and Beyond”
• Project aims:  To develop, test and refine further resources related to the teaching of religious diversity in the classroom setting and to make these available on the MCRI website.
• Project results: Please click here to read the project report.

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• Team Member: Pamela Dickey Young
• Project: “Religion, Gender and Sexuality among Youth in Canada”
• Project aims: To explore the constructions and management strategies undertaken by young adults (aged 18-25) concerning their religious and sexual identities, values, and choices.
• Project results: Please click here to read the project report.

Strand 4 – Alternative Strategies

• Team Member: Pamela Klassen
• Project: “Digital Dissemination of Spiritual Invention of a Nation: Media and Missionaries on Indian Land”
• Project aims: To develop the tools and content to disseminate the results of my SSHRC-funded research project in a digital format in order to reach a broader audience than conventional scholarly modes of publication.
• Project results: Please click here to read the project report.

Strand 1 – Religious Identity

• Team Member: Peter Beyer
• Project: “Web-based Survey on Religious Identity (II): Testing, Refining, Validating”
• Project Aims: The main aim of the project was to develop further a web-based survey instrument on religious identity which had initially been developed in the context of a 2011-2012 project funded through the Religion and Diversity Project.
• Project Results: Please click here to read the project’s report.

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• Team Member: Christopher Helland
• Project: “Religion and Media”
• Project aims: The first component was to develop a Data Management Plan (DMP) that includes meta-data descriptions, storage/access using contentDM, and a searchable public dissemination network. The second component of the project will be to work collaboratively with Joyce Smith (Canada), Kim Knott (United Kingdom), and Mia Lövheim (Sweden) to develop a code book and research guide for examining religion within the news media.
• Project results: Please click here to read the project’s report.

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• Team Member: Solange Lefebvre
• Project: “Religion et sphère publique au Canada: éducation”
• Project aims: This project follows up a project led in 2011-2012 that addressed the government’s approaches to the management of religious diversity.
• Project results: Please click here to read the project’s report. Findings reports available on health, women and education.

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• Team Member: Michael Wilkinson
• Project: “Asian Christians in Vancouver”
• Project aims: The purpose of this project is to begin to map the incidence of Asian Christianity, protestant, Catholic, and other forms, in Vancouver.
• Project results: Please click here to read the project’s report.

Strand 3 – Sexuality and Gender

• Team Member: Pamela Dickey Young
• Project: “Religion, Gender and Sexuality Among Youth in Canada: Preparing for and Conducting Interviews”
• Project aims: To explore the constructions and management strategies undertaken by young adults (aged 18-25) concerning their religious and sexual identities, values, and choices; To examine the significant social, cultural, and political factors that inform the above-mentioned processes; To study how these young adults manage their religious, sexual, and gender identities; To generate rich qualitative and quantitative data that will contribute new knowledge to academic and policy debates on religion, youth, sexuality, and gender.
• Project results: Please click here to read the project’s report.

Strand 4 – Alternative Strategies

• Team Member: Barbara Thériault
• Project: “La religiosité et le corps des détenus”
• Project aims: Further the research carried out at the Tanguay prison in Montréal as part of the grant awarded by the Religion and Diversity Project.
• Project results: Please click here to read the project’s report.

Strand 1 – Religious Identity

• Team Member: Peter Beyer
• Project: “A Web-based Survey Instrument on Religious Identity”
• Project Aims: Putting together of a web-based survey instrument that will be useable by different researchers, working with different groups. To create a single research instrument that allows the understanding of religious group identity differences.
• Project Results: Please click here to read the project’s report.

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• Team Member: Peter Beyer
• Project: “Conceptions of Religious Diversity Among Immigrant and 2^nd Generation Young Adults in Canada: Christians, Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists, Sikhs, and Religious Nones”
• Project aims: To analyze 298 individual, in-depth, and semi-structured interviews drawn from the “Immigrant Youth,” and the “Immigrant Young Adult” projects headed by Peter Beyer.
• Project results: Please click here to read the project’s report.

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• Team Member: Solange Lefebvre
• Project: “The Public Management of Religious Diversity in Québec and Ontario“
• Project aims: The initial goal of this project is to develop and implement a methodology and research process in Québec that could subsequently be implemented in other Canadian provinces.
• Project results: Please click here to read the project’s report.

Strand 2 – Defining, Delimiting

• Team Member: Lori G. Beaman
• Project: “Uncovering Everyday Negotiations: Exploring Best and Worst Practices”
• Project aims: To produce a bibliography, annotated table of cases as well as conducting interviews and focus groups.
• Project results: Please click here to read the project’s report.

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• Team Members: Benjamin Berger and James A. Beckford
• Project: “Religious Diversity in the Prisons of Canada and England & Wales”
• Project aims: This pilot study investigates questions of accommodation, equality and justice that arise in connection with religious diversity. The project’s main aim is to address questions about the definition and delimitation of religion in the context of Canadian and British prisons.
• Project results: Please click here to read the project’s report.

Strand 3 – Sexuality and Gender

• Team Member: Pamela Dickey Young
• Project: “Religion, gender and sexuality among youth in Canada”
• Project aims: To explore the constructions and management strategies
  undertaken by young adults (aged 18-25) both religious and non-religious
  concerning their sexual identities, values, and choices.
• Project results: Please click here to read the project’s funding proposal.

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• Team Member: Pascale Fournier
• Project: “Comparative Law at the Intersection of Religious and Secular Orders: The Muslim Talaq in Israel”
• Project aims: This project is an extension of Pascale Fournier‘s SSHRC funded project on the migration of minority religious laws in Canada, the UK, Germany and France, in which she researched the Jewish divorce and the Islamic Talaq divorce and their effects on the situation of religious women.
• Project results: Please click here to read the project’s report.

Strand 4 – Alternative Strategies

• Team Member: Barbara Thériault
• Project: “L’aumônerie de prison: le cas de l’établissement de détention Tanguay”
• Project aims: To develop a pilot research project on chaplaincy and the religiosity of prisoners in the Tanguay prison, a detention facility in Montréal.
• Project results: Please click here to read the project’s report.

Grants Awarded – Priority Research Areas

Strand 1 – Religious Identity

• Team Members: Solange Lefebvre and Christopher Helland
• Project: To create a database of representation of religious identities and diversity in a specific segment of the Canadian media, namely the internet
• Project aims: To come up with a table that summarizes the hot spots around religion as far as the French media (newspapers) are concerned.

Project results:

• To read the project report, please click here.
• To consult the “Media and Religion” bibliography, please click here.

Strand 2 – Defining, Delimiting

• Team Members: James A. Beckford and Benjamin Berger
• Projet: To address questions about the definition and delimitation of religion in the context of Canadian and British prisons.
• Project aims: The project sought to answer research questions that were all related to the tension between (a) notions of equality, tolerance and the accommodation of diversity in prisons and (b) strategies for limiting the extent to which groups are recognised as religions that are considered worthy of benefiting from official recognition and the freedom of religion permitted within prisons.

Project results: 

• To read the project report, please click here.
• To consult the “Prison Chaplaincy” bibliography, please click here.

Strand 3 – Sexuality and Gender

• Team Members: Nancy Nason-Clark, Pamela Dickey Young, Pascale Fournier, Rubina Ramji, and Donald Boisvert
• Project: The project focused on the intersections of religion, gender and violence and highlighting marginalized voices as priority research themes. The strand produced literature searches and extensive bibliographies
• Project aims: One of the major goals in assembling the summaries and bibliographies was to see what gaps there are in existing literature on religion and violence.

Project results:   

• To read the project report, please click here.
• To consult the bibliographies on religion and violence, please click here.
• To consult the “Topics on Modern Muslim Women” database, please click here.
• To learn more about the Linking Classrooms project (developed by Nancy Nason-Clark), please click here.

Strand 4 – Alternative Strategies

• Team Member: Pamela Klassen
• Project: The project focused on the creation of an extensive annotated bibliography of research on religion, law and the concepts of obligation and commandment in liberal democracies.

Project results:

• To read the project report, please click here.
• To consult the annotated “Forces of Law” bibliography, please click here.

Co-Investigator Projects

• Rukhsana Ahmed: “An Assessment of Health Beliefs Among Muslim Women in Canada: Implications for Culturally and Religiously Appropriate Health Care Practice”. To read the project report, please click here.

• Donald Boisvert: “What Kind of Man Are You?: Same-sex Relations, Masculinity and Anglican Angst”. To read the project report, please click here.

• Avigail Eisenberg: “Religious Minorities and the Norm of Effective Participation”

• Anver Emon: “The Muslim Male Scholar as Feminist Authority”. To read the project report, please click here.

• Rubina Ramji: “Media Representations of Canadian Muslim Youth: Identity for Muslim Youth Post 9/11.” To read the project report, please click here.