KIAS Annual Report

Annual Report2010-2011

THE KULE INSTITUTE for ADVANCED STUDY

advancing humanity, lifting the human spirit


To found in perpetuity an interdisciplinary and comparative research institute that

fosters an innovative intellectual environment for the study of major modern and

historical, political, social, economic, and cultural issues and, therein, advances society

and global polity in a manner consistent with the high humanitarian ideals of the

founding benefactors.

To facilitate transformational interdisciplinary and comparative research at the highest

level nationally and internationally, guided by the ideals of Peter and Doris Kule, the

legacies of Ukrainian history, and the purpose of research and learning at the University

of Alberta, articulated by President Henry Marshall Tory in 1908: “the Uplifting of the

Whole People.”

To establish KIAS as a globally recognized institute of interdisciplinary and comparative

research excellence within fi ve years of inauguration, by linking University of Alberta

undergraduate and graduate student researchers and professors, Kule Post-Doctoral

Fellows, and distinguished visiting researchers from around the world in and across

disciplines, so as to stimulate original ways of thinking, initiate new lines of inquiry, and

incubate innovative ideas for the advancement of humanity and the lifting of the human

spirit.

KIAS Vision

KIas Mission

Kias Goal

table of contents

KIAS Annual Report, 2010-2011

Director’s Message 1

Major Milestones 2

KIAS Governance Bodies 3

KIAS Research Themes (2011-2013) 4

Research Cluster Grant Awards 5

Interdisciplinary Course Seminar Awards 8

Tomorrow’s Ideas, Now Conference 11

External Relations 14

Web Presence & Analytics 15

Our Founding Benefactors 16

page 1: KIAS Annual Report, 2010-2011

2010-2011 marked the inaugural year of operation for the Kule Institute for Advanced Study. KIAS achieved a number of exciting major milestones during the period, as highlighted in the pages that follow here. In brief synopsis, the Institute established its staffi ng, offi ce infrastructure, operating systems, and web presence. Through extensive pan-campus consultations on the research themes and programs for its fi rst three-year cycle (2011-2013), undertaken in the Fall of 2010, KIAS engaged the energies, imagination, and social commitment of students, administrators, and faculty, alike. With its research emphases and grant programming confi rmed by its Administrative Board in January, KIAS moved expeditiously to inform the researcher community in the Fine Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences of opportunities for grants in its focal, socially-responsive areas of Stewardship of the Planet; Place, Belonging, and Otherness; and Culture, Media, Technology.

2010-2011 saw the roll-out of three major initiatives: the Research Cluster Grants Program; the Interdisciplinary Course Seminars Program; and “Tomorrow’s Ideas, Now,” an international, interdisciplinary conference for elite undergraduate students. (Additional programs will be launched in 2011-2012, and will be detailed in next year’s Annual Report.) Finally, it is the mandate of KIAS to establish itself as a globally recognized leader in interdisciplinary research. Consistent with that objective, I undertook missions to profi le the Institute and to explore prospects for collaboration with preferred partners, specifi cally various members of the Worldwide Universities Network (WUN), and distinguished research-intensive institutions in Mexico. I received a warm reception at every turn, and I am delighted to report that there is broad and genuine interest in KIAS and its activities.

Personally, and on behalf of Gillian Edwards, KIAS Executive Manager, I wish to extend deep gratitude to the many dedicated individuals that served on KIAS’s governance bodies in 2010-2011, and in particular to Carl Amrhein, Provost, Chair of our Administrative Board, and Ernie Ingles, Vice-Provost and Chief Librarian, Chair of our Advisory Council. Through the acuity and dedication of these many people, drawn from both within and beyond the University of Alberta, KIAS has established itself, in short order, as a fully functioning research institute, with an emergent international profi le, serving diverse researcher communities, and moving single-mindedly to realize its central strategic objective: Advancing Humanity, Lifting the Human Spirit. Finally, and with profound respect and aff ection, I recognize the visionary philanthropy of Drs. Peter and Doris Kule that has led to the establishment of the Kule Institute for Advanced Study, and that has enabled the many wonderful initiatives KIAS undertook in 2010-2011 and will undertake in the future. Enduring and heartfelt thanks to them.

Jerry A. Varsava, PhD August 31, 2011 Founding Director, KIAS Edmonton, Canada

Message from the Founding Director


Major Milestonesrecommendation by the “Arts in Twenty-First Century” Working Group that an interdisciplinary research institute be established

President Samarasekera pledges at Arts Faculty Council support for an interdisciplinary research institute

announcement of Kule donation of $4 million for the establishment of the Kule Institute for Advanced Study

Academic Planning Committee (APC) of the General Faculties Council (GFC) formally approves establishment of the Kule Institute for Advanced Study (KIAS)

commencement of KIAS operations, with Dr. Jerry Varsava as Founding Director

campus-wide consultations on KIAS research programs and research themes

appointment of Gillian Edwards as KIAS Executive Manager

formal launch of the Kule Institute for Advanced Study

Administrative Board approval of KIAS’s research themes and programs for its fi rst three-year cycle (2011-2013)

launch of KIAS’s Research Cluster Grants Program and Interdisciplinary Course Seminars Program

KIAS joins the Consortium for Humanities Centers and Institutes (CHCI)

awarding of fi rst KIAS Interdisciplinary Course Seminar Grants

awarding of fi rst KIAS Research Cluster Grants

“Tomorrow’s Ideas, Now,” KIAS’s inaugural International Interdisciplinary Undergraduate Conference, University of Alberta

spring 2008

september 2008

november 3, 2009

april 2010

july 1, 2010

fall 2010

october 18, 2010

november 5, 2010

january 11, 2011

february 2011

april 2011

may 2011

august 17 - 19, 2011

february 2011

Chair: Carl Amrhein, Provost & Vice-President (Academic)Philip Bryden, Dean of LawLesley Cormack, Dean of ArtsGillian Edwards, Executive Manager, KIASErnie Ingles, Vice-Provost & Chief LibrarianDavid Marples, Director, Stasiuk ProgramAndriy Nahachewsky, Director, Ukrainian Folklore CentreGeoff rey Rockwell, Director, Canadian Institute for Research in Computing and the Arts Mazi Shirvani, Vice-Provost & Dean of Graduate Studies & ResearchJerry Varsava, Founding Director, KIAS

Chair: Ernie Ingles, Vice-Provost & Chief LibrarianVic Adamowicz, Professor, Resource Economics & Environmental SociologyBetsy Boone, Chair, Art & DesignLesley Cormack, Dean of ArtsGillian Edwards, Executive Manager, KIASAndrew Hladyshevsky, Partner, Fraser Milner Casgrain, LLPGordon Houlden, Director, The China InstituteZenon Kohut, Director, Canadian Institute of Ukrainian StudiesNatalie Kononenko, Kule Chair, Modern Languages & Cultural StudiesIrena Makaryk, Vice-Dean, Graduate & Postdoctoral Studies, University of OttawaBohdan Medwidsky, Professor Emeritus, Modern Languages & Cultural StudiesMost Reverend David Motiuk, Bishop of Eparchy of EdmontonRoman Petryshyn, Director,Ukrainian Resource and Development Centre, Grant MacEwan UniversityRick Szostak, Professor, EconomicsJerry Varsava, Founding Director, KIAS

Chair: Jerry Varsava, Founding Director, KIASGillian Edwards, Executive Manager, KIASLois Harder, Professor, Political ScienceIngrid Johnston, Professor, Secondary EducationLeonard Ratzlaff , Professor, MusicImre Szeman, Canada Research Chair, English & Film Studies


KIAS Governance Bodies, 2010 - 2011

administrative board

advisory council

research committee


KIAS Research Themes (2011-2013)KIAS works in three-year research cycles that are guided by a set of themes, which focus on issues of global import. These themes provide researchers a degree of guidance in their research, while also allowing fl exibility in exactly what they investigate. In order to ensure that the fi rst research cycle of KIAS refl ected the interests and strengths of the research community, a large consultation was conducted that allowed members of the University’s faculty and student body to determine the research focus of the Institute. The KIAS Research

Committee brought forward eight topics that were considered to be high priority; from there, 235 students and faculty on campus logged their thoughts on SurveyMonkey. Without this type of consultation, KIAS would not have been able to be responsive to the needs of the ever-changing research publics on campus. After further consultation with the KIAS governance bodies, the themes were approved in January 2011. The themes will be reviewed in late 2012 to ensure that they continue to meet their purpose of advancing transformative research.

Ethically informed stewardship of the planet can be pursued from a number of points of view and in a variety of contexts, but there is an urgency to examine the issue now, and to propose tenable responses to this challenge. As we have witnessed, recent months have brought devastation to human and natural ecologies in Japan, food riots in Africa and India, renewed focus on global population growth, and a heightened concern for mitigation of environmental risk.

There is a foundational human concern to understand one’s place in, not only the physical world, but also in the social spaces in which we move, and to which we may feel affi nity or distance. The theme of Place, Belonging, and Otherness encourages an examination of a broad range of relationships in order to better understand the human social condition, whether in the early twenty-fi rst century or at antecedent historical points.

In an age saturated with new technologies and a proliferation of representational media, there is a need to reconsider both traditional forms of cultural expression and new ones enabled by technological advancement. This topic encourages an engagement of the imaginative, material, and social conditions of arts’ production and reception.

hi ll i f d d histewardship of the planet

Th i f d ti l hplace, belonging & otherness

I t t d ith t hculture, media, technology

This project asks, among other questions: What kinds of knowledge do Indigenous women hold about water in northern Alberta and northern Oaxaca? How are Indigenous women’s knowledge and livelihood systems connected? How can dynamic and diverse values of water be incorporated within water legislation? How have both historical and contemporary strategies informed law and governance? How can this research inform policies for sharing spaces and places in North America? To fully address these questions this interdisciplinary research team of Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars draws upon: 1) accountable collaboration; 2) feminist critical realism; 3) Indigenous legal feminist methodology; and 5) archival research. By comparing these two complex and socio-historical confi gurations, this project seeks to explore the impact of social, political, and economic factors on the disjuncture between knowledge, gender, law, and governance in two distinct regions.

High Risk Youth Uncensored: An Educational Exchange, underway since fall 2009, partners not-for-profi t arts-based organization iHuman Youth Society; Edmonton and Area Child and Family Services High Risk Youth Unit; University of Alberta researchers, students and other community collaborators. The project also involves a number of youth as key collaborators. The study’s aim is to develop a series of arts-based workshops to educate service providers (e.g. law enforcement, health providers, educators, social workers) through face-to-face encounters with youth and their art-works (storytelling, music, drama, visual and digital arts) about how to best meet the particular needs of

the youth populations they serve. Several successful workshops have already been facilitated and an evaluation of the outcomes for service providers is underway. The focus of the proposed research is a formal evaluation of the positive outcomes for youth involved in developing and facilitating the workshops.


Research Cluster GrantsThe Research Cluster Grants investigate and promote important research ideas, working in KIAS’s established themes. The outcome of these grants will be interdisciplinary and thought-provoking work, which will be accessible to the university community and the public alike. These grants advance the KIAS vision of interdisciplinary and comparative research. They are committed to the study of major issues present in the global community and will impact research, social viewpoints, and policies as they develop and evolve.

The grant winners will utilize the innovative Kule Dialogues program, which focuses on dissemination and outreach to the various publics that KIAS serves. The program will provide the award winners with additional funding to get the word out about their research and to involve a variety of groups in the work that they are conducting.

Isabel Altamirano-Jimenez, Political Science, Faculty of Arts/Native StudiesIndigenous women’s knowledge and stewardship of water

Diane Conrad, Secondary Education, Faculty of EducationEvaluating Youth Outcomes for the “High Risk Youth Uncensored” Program

The University of Alberta is playing a lead role in bringing together a small team of researchers from Canada and Sri Lanka to explore how low cost, ubiquitous information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) can contribute to food security objectives in developing countries by enhancing or cultivating local agricultural communities of practice. The team has begun to explore this community of practice approach with three cross-cutting objectives in sight: (1) Understand the current state of knowledge mobilization among local farming communities in Sri Lanka by studying the informal and formal interactions between knowledge producers and consumers, and especially the role of women in these networks; (2) Articulate how communities of practices (involving farmers, extension offi cers and other relevant stakeholders) may be developed or enhanced so as to increase information and knowledge sharing across the three identifi ed problem areas whilst ensuring that women can access and reap a fair share of the benefi ts of these communities of practice; (3) Evaluate the utility of low cost and widely available communication technologies for enhancing the capacity of the poorest and most vulnerable, especially women in agrarian communities, in achieving sustainable agricultural practices and long term food security.


Research Cluster Grants

Our project is a collaboration between fi ve UofA researchers, two teachers at Edmonton elementary schools, and a private Edmonton company called Rocketfuel Games. We propose to create a gaming platform and authoring toolset called The Quest to improve the educational experience of elementary students in Alberta. The ‘gamifi cation’ of an elementary school curriculum takes the incentives and play-like structure of computer games

(levels, experience points, achievements, etc.) and adapts them to the teaching curriculum. Students advance in levels by completing quests rather than assignments. The curriculum, wrapped in the envelope of game mechanics, motivates the students in novel ways, particularly when they are allowed to develop their own teaching modules. This last point is key to our proposal. Our game authoring toolset will allow students the opportunity to create their own educational games, rather than just play educational games - an important element in constructionist pedagogy.

Gordon Gow, Faculty of ExtensionEnvironmentally sustainable farming practices through a technology-enhanced community of practice approach: Establishing a Research Partnership between the University of Alberta and Sri Lanka

Sean Gouglas, History & Classics, Faculty of ArtsThe Quest: Creating a gaming community platform

driven by students in real world classrooms.


Petrocultures is a new research cluster at the University of Alberta whose aim is to support, produce, and distribute research related to the socio-cultural aspects of oil and energy in Canada and the world today. The University has developed considerable expertise in the study of the scientifi c, fi nancial, and environmental dimensions of our oil economy. A growing number of researchers

at the U of A are engaged in an exploration of the social and cultural dimensions of oil and energy. The research activities and structures created by the Petrocultures Research Cluster will enhance and expand this research, and position the U of A at the forefront of a growing fi eld of academic study.

Funding from KIAS to support the establishment of the Petrocultures Research Cluster will enable research on oil cultures at the U of A and create the framework to help support collaborative research on the topic from multiple disciplinary perspectives. This cluster will also produce scholarship that responds to the U of A’s research focus on water, food and energy.

It is important that governments, corporations, and citizens regard themselves as stewards of the planet, but our toughest environmental problems demand more than just an ethical commitment to care for the planet; they require an understanding of whole environmental systems, and action across whole political, social and cultural systems. Climate change is a case in point—the complexity of the problem has so far stymied eff ective and coordinated action by governments, industries, communities, and individuals.

‘Stewardship’ demands new forms of collaboration. Our interdisciplinary, interdepartmental, research team will analyze the formal public engagement exercises that have been most infl uential in forming Alberta’s current climate change and energy policies, looking in particular at how organized stakeholder groups and lay citizens have been involved, the specifi c design of their involvement, and the relative infl uence of these two groups on outcomes.

David Kahane, Political Science, Faculty of Arts“Whose environmental stewardship? Citizen and stakeholder roles in making Alberta climate change policy”

Sheena Wilson, Campus Saint-JeanPetrocultures: The Cultures of Oil in Canada and the World

Research Cluster Grants


The Interdisciplinary Course Seminars will be made available to senior undergraduate and graduate students working in the social sciences, humanities, and fi ne arts. They will off er students a unique opportunity to study crucial global topics with some of the best professors at the University of Alberta. Students will conduct research and have the opportunity to disseminate their work through events organized by their professors, where other members of the academic community will be able to engage with the research questions considered throughout the semester. These courses will encourage undergraduate and graduate research on the University of Alberta campus, helping in developing future leaders in the global community.

Scott Smallwood, Music, Faculty of ArtsSound in the Arts, Fall 2011During the last sixty years there has been an explosive change in the way sound has been explored in the arts, not only in discipline of music, but in many other disciplines in the arts and humanities. Sound has, perhaps, become a medium in its own right, independent of its role in the history of music. How has the rise of “sound art” changed the way we listen? Is sound art the same thing as music? What does it mean for a visual artist, untrained in the musical arts, to use sound in her work? How has sound awareness aff ected architecture? What comes fi rst in fi lm: image or sound? How do we evaluate these uses of sound? How have these uses of sound changed the way we critique the arts, and music? These and many other questions will be dealt with as we explore the emergence of sound art as a combined outgrowth of new explorations in music, fi lm, architecture, dance, and the visual arts during the past sixty years? We will explore the evolution of sound as an important medium in the arts, as well as the development of soundscape studies in acoustic ecology. This course requires no specifi c background or training in the arts, although there will be an expectation that students will engage with artistic works at a critical level, as well as some small-scale creative work.

Maria Whiteman, Art & Design, Faculty of ArtsArt and Posthumanism, Fall 2011

The discourses of posthumanism constitute one of the most exciting areas of contemporary critical thought. Posthumanism is the name for forms of critical, cultural and social theory that take up the consequences of the myriad challenges made to classical humanism and the divisions (moral, epistemological, political, ethical) that it has supported. This graduate seminar/studio-practicum course is designed to allow students to encounter some of the main texts of posthumanism and to consider how these discourses function both in cultural/critical theory

and in contemporary visual arts. In addition, this course gives students an opportunity to experiment with the production of visual texts (photography, video, installation, etc.) as a mode of research into and representation of posthumanist themes and concerns. The interdisciplinary character of this course comes both from its subject matter and from the way in which graduate students will be enabled to engage with it: through the creation of visual art in addition to the forms of textual research carried out in most disciplinary fi elds in the Faculty of Arts.

Interdisciplinary Course Seminars

As participants in a faculty of Arts, how do we see and characterize ourselves? Are we articulate champions of what we do? And how eff ectively do we explain what we do? This course explores and assesses the representation of ourselves, Arts students and faculty, through examining the expressions of experience and knowledge along with the embedded assumptions in three related textualities: fi lms, novels, and disciplinary criticism. By testing disciplinary critiques against embodiments in fi ction and fi lm, we will discuss and judge the accuracy, insight and occasional stereotypes of these cultural instruments of writing in various media. By challenging us to think about a disciplinary identity in an interdisciplinary format, the seminar aims to exercise creative and critical faculties laterally, to expand the linguistic tools with which we can speak about our study, and to demonstrate the value of the inquiry through a concluding public seminar.


Wayne DeFehr, English & Film Studies, Faculty of ArtsAdvanced Gaming Narrative: Animating Avatars in Virtual Worlds, Winter 2012

Video and computer games enjoy widespread popularity currently, with millions of players participating in a variety of gaming formats. Games off er many connections to the study of narrative, which could complement other approaches to literature studies. These connections include discussions about the meanings of traditional features such as setting, character and plot, and also political elements relating avatar relationships with each other and their virtual environments. Many pre-packaged, and professionally released video games have contributed to classroom activities, where students learn the rules of the game, attempt to meet a prescribed goal, and then report on the learning that took place. This course, however, would utilize a script composition program

called ScriptEase to create video games of the students’ own that would explore various saspects of narrative such as genre, politics, and plot development. ScriptEase has been developed at the U of A by professors Fuane Szafron and Jonathan Schaeff er among others. The development team has published their fi ndings on high school student involvement with ScriptEase to demonstrate the possibility of creating video games form scratch by non-code writin students. As well, ScriptEase is currently being used in courses off ered by Computing Science as well as Humanities Computing. In the English Department, ScriptEase would have a “literary” focus, where students would be required to construct narratives with some level of sophistication that would qualify as literary merit well beyond the cliched violence of commercial video games.

Patricia Demers, English & Film Studies, Faculty of ArtsEyes Wide Open: Arts Students and Professors in Film, Literature, and Criticism, Winter 2012



Natalie Kononenko, Modern Languages & Cultural Studies, Faculty of ArtsCartoons, Politics, and Folklore, Fall 2012

Guillaume Tardif, Music, Faculty of ArtsCulture and Creativity: Music and Business Perspectives, Winter 2012

Animation, especially animation based on folklore, appears so innocent, so timeless, so universal. But modern scholarship has shown that it is precisely this seeming innocence that allows fi lm studios to use cartoons to project their own messages. Most studies (Zipes, Giroux) have focused on cartoons as vehicles for promoting consumerism. This course will examine cartoons as a means of promoting political messages. We will focus primarily on nationalism, although attention to gender and race will also be part of the course. The course aims to broaden students’ cultural awareness by looking at three cultures. Typically the target foreign culture is compared to mainstream North America. We will look at animation in the United States and Canada, but we will compare it not to one culture, but two: France and the Francophone world and

the Soviet Union and at least two of its post-Soviet successor states, specifi cally Russia and Ukraine. By examining how three diff erent world areas use cartoons to convey political messages we will be able to more clearly see how modern media tries to shape world view. Working with cartoons will be an especially eff ective way to explore media because cartoons are part of the lives of our students. They watch them now and they enjoyed them as children. Thus the course will train students to look at the media with a critical eye.

This seminar will examine the notions of culture and creativity, fi rst from the separate perspectives of music and business, then toward an understanding of their intersection and joint impact in today’s world. Music and business students will be reviewing and comparing core models used in both fi elds of study, and will be exposed to conversations with guest lecturers –artists, arts managers, and business professionals known for their initiative and advocacy at the junction of art and business. Students will be required to present their related research fi ndings in the form of an online publication.



Tomorrow’s Ideas, Now

In its fi rst iteration, the KIAS undergraduate conference garnered participation from students in twenty-three cities, eight countries, and four continents.

Tomorrow’s Ideas, Now has fostered a strong relationship between KIAS and various members of the Worldwide Universities Network (WUN), of which the

University of Alberta is one. Students from six member institutions attended the fi rst KIAS conference.

For three days in August 2011, KIAS hosted the inaugural conference for “Tomorrow’s Ideas, Now,” an undergraduate research conference for students in the social sciences, humanities, and the fi ne arts. The students submitted abstracts which were reviewed by the conference committee, Drs Jerry Varsava (Chair), Len Ratzlaff , and Henry Van Egteren.

Of the many abstracts submitted, only 40 were accepted. Presentations were interdisciplinary, and worked within one or more of the KIAS research themes. With 100% take-up for registration, students were clearly excited for the chance to come to Edmonton and meet their peers.

On August 17th, the participants descended upon the U of A from all parts of the world. “Tomorrow’s Ideas, Now” had students from Canada, the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Mexico, China, Japan, and Australia. Students from the following institutions presented their research:

• Columbia College Chicago• Grant MacEwan University• Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München• McGill University• Nanjing University*• St. Francis Xavier University• Tohoku University• Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México• University of Alberta*• University of Bristol*• University of California, Santa Barbara• University of Cambridge• University of Leeds*• University of Manitoba• University of Southampton*• University of Sydney*• University of Waterloo• University of York*



* indicates WUN membership

Over the course of two days, the students immersed themselves in one another’s research papers and provoked new lines of questioning at every turn. Topics ranged from the use of mobile phones for political activism, queer African American literature, the use of community gardens for social and environmental connections, sustainable museums, Aboriginal representation in the Canadian parliament, sex worker’s agency in Canada, and social and human capital.

The conference featured two keynote addresses from two engaging speakers: Dr Sean Gouglas from the Department of History and Classics, and Mr Kei Narita, an Educational Science student from Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan. The keynotes gave the students a large arena to discuss important and timely topics, such as the earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan in March 2011.

Throughout the conference, students were able to meet their peers in a variety of settings, one being the Closing Barbecue at Alumni House on August 19th. The founding benefactors of KIAS, Drs. Peter and Doris Kule, were in attendance and were greeted with heartfelt and genuine thanks from all of the participants.

For many, this was their fi rst time to Canada, or even leaving their own country. “Tomorrow’s Ideas, Now” brought the next great minds of tomorrow together to forge long-lasting and vital connections with each other. It is through work like this that KIAS is able to further its mandate of transformative research and to promote undergraduate research to the greater community.



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External RelationsIt is the mandate of KIAS to establish itself as a globally recognized leader in interdisciplinary research. Consistent with that objective, Director Varsava undertook missions to profi le the Institute and to explore prospects for collaboration with preferred partners, especially various members of the Worldwide Universities Network (WUN), and distinguished research-intensive institutions in Mexico.

In September, 2010, the Director was invited by Dr. Dru Marshall, Deputy Provost, and Chair of the Mexico Regional Council, to participate in a mission to Mexico City. The Director visited the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) and Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas (CIDE). In the late fall, Director Varsava, while attending a research conference in Australia, took the opportunity to visit the two Australian members of the WUN: the University of Sydney and the University of Western Australia. Further, in April, Director Varsava visited the fi ve British members of the

WUN—the University of Bristol, the University of Leeds, the University of Sheffi eld, the University of Southampton, and the University of York—and also met with directors of research institutes at Birkbeck College, University of London.

In addition to international liaison and profi ling, Director Varsava met with Dr. Pekka Sinervo, Senior Vice-President (Research), Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR) in Toronto in September to inform Dr. Sinervo of KIAS’s activities and to learn more about CIFAR’s. The Director also met with Dr. Robert Gibbs, Director, Jackman Humanities Institute, the largest research institute of its kind in Canada, University of Toronto. The Jackman hosted the 2011 Annual Conference of the Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes (CHCI) in June; at the encouragement of Dr. Gibbs, KIAS became a member of the CHCI in 2011, and Director Varsava and Executive Manager Edwards attended the 2011 conference in Toronto. Founded in 1988, the CHCI is a global consortium with over 150 members worldwide.

The Director received a warm reception at every turn, and he can report that there is broad and genuine interest in KIAS and its activities. Six of the visited institutions agreed to provide travel support for their students to attend KIAS’s 2011 international, interdisciplinary undergraduate conference, “Tomorrow’s Ideas, Now.” Students from preferred-partner institutions made up a signifi cant part of the conference’s large international contingent; it is hoped that preferred partner institutions will continue to send strong numbers of participants to the annual conference. In additional to promoting “Tomorrow’s Ideas, Now,” the Director learned of research activities on the various campuses by meeting with members of the international offi ce, deans, directors of research centers and institutes, and researchers. It is hoped that some KIAS-supported researchers will be able to collaborate with colleagues at preferred-partner institutions in the future through KIAS’s External Research Collaboration Grant Program. KIAS is grateful to Mr. Cristian Gonzalez-Paez, Regional Manager (Americas), UAI, Dr. Stefan Scherer, WUN Projects Coordinator, University of Alberta, and colleagues from the international offi ce of the preferred-partner universities for their kind cooperation and support.

Since the launch of the KIAS website in December 2010, its presence has been strong locally and internationally. The website provides resources for the research community that the institute serves, with information about grants, adjudication results, events, and news items, all available to the public.

One of the strongest facets of the KIAS site is its theme databases. These allow researchers at the University of Alberta to locate others working with similar foci across the campus in order to facilitate the interdisciplinary research which is at the heart of the KIAS mandate. The database is continually updated with new additions, allowing for fl uid growth and interaction.


Web Presence & Analytics

overview of traffi c

direct traffi c

visits

countriespageviews

bounce rate

4,593

10318,023

48%42%

from March 1, 2011 until August 21, 2011

KIAS maintains a Facebook page, as well as a WordPress blog, which allow the institute to communicate more rapidly with its various

audiences.


Our Founding Benefactors

Drs. Peter and Doris Kule are two outstanding Canadian philanthropists, visionaries, and community leaders who have given most generously in support of post-secondary education and research. Through their donations, they have touched the lives of many professors and students at the University of Alberta and elsewhere. In 2005, the University of Alberta awarded honorary doctorates to Peter and Doris Kule in recognition of their many contributions to the community and to the University of Alberta.

Drs. Peter and Doris Kule have provided the founding endowment for the Kule Institute for Advanced Study which was established on July 1, 2010. The Kules’ beliefs and principles are refl ected in the mission and vision of the Kule Institute for Advanced Study which seeks to enhance understanding of complex and pressing issues through interdisciplinary research in the Humanities, Social Sciences, and Fine Arts. KIAS and the researcher community it serves are greatly indebted to the Kules, and will strive to advance society and global polity in a manner consistent with their high humanitarian ideals.


Vice-Provost (Academic) Colleen Skidmore, Founding Director Jerry Varsava, and Drs. Peter and Doris Kule.

The Kule Institute for Advanced Study (KIAS)3-22 Arts & Convocation Hall

University of AlbertaEdmonton, Canada T6G 2E6

www.kias.ualberta.ca | [email protected]

The Kule Institute for Advanced Study is an interdisciplinary and comparative research institute that fosters an innovative intellectual environment for the study of major modern and historical, political, social, economic and cultural issues and, therein, advances society and global polity in a manner consistent with the high

humanitarian ideals of the founding benefactors, Drs. Peter and Doris Kule.

Documents

KIAS Annual Report