Carleton graduate student Robin MacEwan is among the top five in the SSHRC Research for a Better Life: Storytellers Challenge in 2014. The announcement was made during the 2014 Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences at Brock University in St. Catharines, Ont.
As part of the competition, MacEwan, who is pursuing her master’s in Social Work, created a video on her examination of social support networks of former foster youth, with a focus on youth who have spent time in group homes.
“Children raised in the foster care system are an extremely marginalized group, and they lack supports upon entering adulthood,” says MacEwan. “My research seeks to show that youth in care require further social and financial supports after they leave the foster care system.”
Originally from Quesnel, B.C. MacEwan graduated from the University of British Columbia-Okanagan (UBC-Okanagan) in 2009 before working with vulnerable children and youth in the foster-care system. This experience inspired her research interest in social support networks for youth raised in foster care.
She hopes to use the findings from her research to improve policies and support programs in place for these young people. She credits Carleton Social Work Prof. Adje Van de Sande for his ongoing support of this project, and UBC-Okanagan professors Patricia Tomic and Ricardo Trumper for cultivating her ability to think critically about social problems.
“I’m excited to educate people about this problem,” says MacEwan. “Not a lot of people know about foster care and the trouble faced by these youth. The Storytellers Challenge is helping to spread the word amongst academics, policy-makers and the general public.”
Four Carleton University students placed among the top 25 winners of theStorytellers Challenge this year, including Katarina Kuruc, a PhD candidate in the School of Journalism and Communications; Annie McEwen, a PhD candidate in the School of Public Policy and Administration; and Ryan Katz-Rosene, a PhD candidate in the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies. The challenge tasked post-secondary students across Canada with showing Canadians how social sciences and humanities research affects our lives, our world and our future prosperity.
The students were asked to produce a video, podcast, editorial or infographic promoting a great SSHRC funded research project taking place at Carleton. The Carleton participants’ videos are available at this link.
These Top 25 received a prize of $3,000, registration and accommodation at Congress at Brock University (provided by the Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences), and an invitation to participate in an exclusive research communications workshop at Congress. They each competed to become one of the Final Five Storytellers in The Storytellers Showcase. The Final Five will give a featured presentation to a VIP audience at SSHRC’s 2014 Impact Awards ceremony in Ottawa in the fall.
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