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SSHRC Insight Grant fuels Emily Ansari’s Southam research
Abridged from an article by Lauren daSilva via Western News
Western University researchers earned a total of nearly $9.8 million in new Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) grants supporting innovative research across disciplines. The July 21 funding announcement highlights more than $289 million in federal support for research projects and partnerships across Canada.
Nearly $6.5 million in SSHRC Insight Grants – supporting research excellence in the social sciences and humanities – was awarded to Western scholars, plus $3.3 million in Insight Development Grants, which foster research in its initial stages. Western attracted 46 Insight Development Grants across six faculties. The $6.5 million in Insight Grants, which represents a 72 per cent increase in funding to Western compared to 2025, will fund two- to five-year research projects into topics ranging from loneliness, democratic participation, international law, Canadian culture and feminist history.
Among the grants awarded was Emily Abrams Ansari's project "Music, Feminism, and Crafting: Ann Southam’s Women’s World."
For centuries, women’s work has been dismissed, minimized or labeled unserious. Yet women artists have continued to challenge convention and reshape culture. Western music history professor Ansari believes few Canadians embody that legacy more powerfully than composer Ann Southam.
Ansari’s project explores the life and legacy of the Toronto composer, whose contribution to Canadian culture remains relatively unknown despite her significant impact on the country’s musical landscape.
Southam found new ways to represent feminist ideas in her music. According to Ansari, she sought to imitate “women’s work” in her compositions. That includes repetitive tasks of domestic life – such as cooking, cleaning, spinning, embroidery and knitting – and the tasks associated with crafting.
“We all carry within us a masculine view on what great art is. Southam’s resistance is unique – she focused on crafts, for so long dismissed as trivial because they were women’s,” Ansari said.
Read the full article via Western News (by Lauren daSilva, July 27, 2026):