Language Sciences is thrilled for Dr Anusha Kassan and her team for receiving the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Partnership Development Grant (PDG). The grant will advance their research on Child Language Brokering (CLB) and shed light on nuances that were previously overlooked, contributing to mapping and understanding the integration of immigrants into Canadian society.
Language Sciences is a fortunate partner of the research from early stages by providing two seed grants that facilitated initial ground work. Today, we sat down with Dr Kassan to hear about her pains-taken journey of landing a SSHRC PDG, and her plans for the project.
- Can you please tell us about your project?
For the past five years, I have been collaborating on research pertaining to Child Language Brokering (CLB), which occurs when newcomer parents/guardians rely on their children/youth for linguistic translation and interpretation in various situations, such as medical, legal, and educational contexts. CLB is a complex phenomenon and represents a necessity for many newcomer families. My personal interest in this topic comes from my own experience growing up in an immigrant household and community.
Thus far, the research has taken place in collaboration with The Education Immigration Society (TIES). Our research has used a mix-methods approach to unearth the phenomenon and also inform programming with newcomer families. We are in the process of publishing a co-edited book – Beyond translation: Exploring child language brokering in Alberta’s culturally diverse landscape – which summarizes our research and programmatic efforts to date.
To move our research efforts forward, we have applied for a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Partnership Development Grant (PDG) in the most recent competition, and was successfully funded. We are grateful for the resources and look forward to advancing the project!
- PDG application is a daunting process for many. A lot of times, it starts with smaller grants in the beginning. Can you tell us about the seed grants from Language Sciences, and how they have facilitated later processes?
The proposed project for the SSHRC PDG is grounded in principles of social justice and positions newcomer families as experts on their own experiences who have critical perspectives to share about the phenomenon of CLB. Our research involves a partnership between TIES and le Portail Immigration Association (PIA). The proposed multi-lingual research will include five newcomer families from the English immigration sector and five from the French section. In this sense, it is community-driven and offers an intervention to participants; hence, it is intended to have immediate helpful impacts on families.
The research will employ an arts-based engagement ethnography methodology to capture nuanced experiences of CLB in newcomer families. Participants will be invited to document their experiences using cultural probes (cameras, journals, maps) as well as individual and family interviews. This inquiry will be guided by the following research questions: a) How do members of a newcomer family in Canada experience the phenomenon of CLB, both individually and collectively? and b) How do these experiences influence their positive integration into Canadian society? Multiple knowledge mobilization activities are planned through the project, including the creation of a documentary, which will highlight the experiences of newcomer family.
In the past three years, I have received two modest seed grants from Language Sciences, which have supported early stages of this research. The funding has been invaluable in getting some of our projects started, and I am sure that it will play an important role in the adjudication of our SSHRC PDG.
- What are the key challenges while applying to PDG?
Simply put, the SSHRC PDG is a beast of an application! It is a huge undertaking… In addition to 100s hours of work that went into conceptualizing the project and developing the application, it was built on over five years of partnerships with community agencies. In putting together our application, we worked collaboratively to design the study and work on different parts of the application. Further, we had some graduate student support, which was partially funding by Language Sciences. I would say that the major challenge with this application was time, as the process is lengthy and quite detailed oriented. Finding a cohesive thread that can be consistent throughout the application is important. To obtain this consistently, it required many collaborative conversations with community partners.
- What advice would you give other researchers who are considering PDG application?
I would suggest that university scholars and community partners begin early in their planning and development. We had monthly meetings for a year prior to submitting our application. Further, we spent three full days together in the final stages of the application to complete the write-up. It is important to consider that this required a significant time commitment from TIES and PIA, which was a lot of ask from community practitioners who are already overworked. Given our strong, long-term relationship, working in this way made sense. However, other partnerships might benefit from a different approach. The other recommendation I would make is to secure a SSHRC Partnership Engagement Grant and/or Connection Grant as a stepping stone to the PDG.
I hope this information is helpful! I would be happy to discuss my experience in more detail with any member of Language Sciences who might be interested. Please do not hesitate to reach out to me, if you would like…
Dr Anusha Kassan will discuss her experiences collaborating in academia at LangSci's Grad & Postdoc Research Day on Friday, May 10, 9:30-10:15 am at Dodson Room. Check out the schedule and RSVP here.