Three Master of Arts in Island Studies awarded SSHRC Canada Graduate Scholarship
Three students from the Master of Arts in Island Studies (MAIS) program at the University of Prince Edward Island have been awarded Canada Graduate Scholarships from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRCC) through its master’s program competition. The program is open to Canadian graduate students from across the country. This year, a total of 73 awards, valued at $17,500 each, were given out in the master’s category.
“Congratulations to our three MAIS students who were awarded these prestigious SSHRC scholarships,” said Dr. Katherine Gottschall-Pass, interim vice-president academic and research at UPEI. “We look forward to your scholarly contributions to the University of Prince Edward Island.”
The three MAIS students are all thesis students who began their studies in the fall of 2019.
A resident of rural Prince Edward Island, Sarah Davison is an entrepreneur who is interested in the stories and visual representations of island entrepreneurs who work in PEI’s tourism industry, specifically within the arts and culture sector. As a photographer, Davison loves all forms of art. She is passionate about exploring coastal communities, supporting local businesses, and collaborating with creative entrepreneurs. Her topic is entitled “An exploration of how tourism imagery in Prince Edward Island compares to and influences local arts and culture entrepreneurs’ understandings of self, place and business.”
Joyce Ferguson’s research interests revolve around the relationship between energy policy and community in an island setting. Ferguson has chosen to focus her thesis research on her home province of Prince Edward Island through a case study of a wind farm expansion controversy in eastern Kings County. Her thesis is entitled “Prince Edward Island and Renewable Energy: The Preconditions for a Sustainable Future.”
Megan Lane MacDonald comes to the program with a background in history and English literature. She is a UPEI alumna and is currently studying the poetry of Prince Edward Island (when she is not writing her own). Her project is entitled “Islands of Words: An Analysis of Island Cultures through Their Poetic Works.”
“These awards recognize top scholarship from across the country and are indicative of the quality of the research being done by our students here at UPEI,” said Dr. Laurie Brinklow, interim coordinator of the MAIS program. “We couldn’t be prouder of Sarah, Joyce, and Megan. Their research will make an important contribution to the culture and environment of Prince Edward Island, and serve as object lessons for other islands around the globe.”
There are currently more than 40 students in the MAIS program, most of whom are in the thesis stream, with others in the course/work-study streams for island tourism, sustainable island communities, international relations, and island public policy. While the majority of the students come from Prince Edward Island, others are from Halifax, Ontario, the US, England, the Bahamas, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Sweden, Vietnam, Nigeria, Ghana, and China.
