July 2014

Daniel Heidt, Co-Founder, Waterloo Innovations

The 2014 Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences was a terrific opportunity for start-up companies, like Waterloo Innovations, to showcase their products. Most academics at Congress were unfamiliar with our product, Confero. For readers who may have missed our booth, Confero uses QR codes to automate the process of organizing hundreds or thousands of research photographs into neat file directories and multi-page pdfs. For $25 it can reduce hours of manually sorting research photographs into minutes of keyboard time.

Congress provided Waterloo Innovations with an unparalleled opportunity to solicit feedback from academics, and we are currently in the process of integrating these comments into Confero 2.0. New...

Our mission at the Federation is to promote the value of research and learning in the social sciences and humanities (SSH). Often we’re asked, don’t you feel  excluded when people  talk about “science and technology (S&T)” or “science” as a catch-phrase for all research? Of course we’d like a greater focus on the value of the SSH in conversations about research, and that’s something the secretariat works on in our discussions with policy makers. But the basic answer to the question is no, we do not feel excluded.   Today, “S&T” is increasingly defined to include the arts, humanities and social sciences, as well as the natural and health sciences and engineering. We know that SSH research in Canada is world-class, and believe that collaboration between the SSH and organizations in the natural and health sciences and engineering makes all research stronger.  

This type of interdisciplinary collaboration and understanding is something the Federation actively promotes....

This year at Congress, the Federation hosted a four-part series dedicated to equity issues, which included the following sessions:

• Challenging casual homophobia in schools, sports, and society
• Sochi and beyond: Russia's anti-gay legislation, human rights and the practice of history
• The nuances of Blackness and/in the Canadian academy
• What are “Canadian” and “Quebec”...

The Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences is proud to have brought you our 83rd Congress, the largest multidisciplinary academic gathering in Canada—indeed, one of the largest such gatherings in the world. Congress 2014 will be remembered for its interdisciplinarity, for the 75 scholarly association meetings and the 5,000+ papers presented. It took place in an outstanding setting at the beautiful Brock University campus in St. Catharines, Ontario in the heart of the Niagara region.

Creating meaningful connections between researchers and the broader community is a key goal for Congress organizers, both at the Federation and at the host university. Through proactive outreach to media, government and other...