April 4, 2014
Photo credit: Luther Caverly
Life After CRC
The Canada Research Chairs (CRC) program is designed to attract the best talent from Canada and around the world, helping universities achieve research excellence in many different fields.
Shawn Hayley and Sheryl N. Hamilton have recently completed their respective terms as Canada Research Chairs and they look back at their experience, while also sharing what lies ahead for their work.
The Canada Research Chairs (CRC) program is designed to attract the best talent from Canada and around the world
Driving neuroscience forward
“I think that the CRC program is highly useful in helping retain Canadian researchers in a variety of specialized areas,” says Dr. Shawn Hayley, the Graduate Chair at the Department of Neuroscience, who ran his tenure as a CRC for 10 years. “Of course, a central and highly important feature of the program is the partial teaching buyout that allows for a teaching course reduction. This provides faculty the much-needed time to devote to establishing a productive research focus.”
Hayley is the former Canada Research Chair in Behavioural Neuroscience. His research as a CRC was broadly focused on how communication between the brain and immune system influence health. In particular, this involved two main research themes: the neuroinflammatory mechanisms for Parkinson’s disease (PD) and how the immune system can affect plasticity within the brain to influence the development of depression.
One of the key findings in the case of the depression research was that an immune system protein that normally stimulates red blood cell production, called erythropoietin (EPO), has robust anti-depressant properties and markedly stimulated neuroplasticity.
“Developing a better understanding of the neuroinflammatory mechanisms underlying neurodegeneration could lead to the identification of novel drug targets for treating PD”, says Hayley. “Likewise, our findings on depression could lead to the development of a novel line of anti-depressants. These could be used to augment existing therapies, or target the appreciable number of antidepressant-resistant individuals, as well as reduce the high rate of relapse typically observed in depressive individuals.”
Following the completion of his term as a Canada Research Chair, Hayley is continuing the same line of research, focusing on assessment of how stressors affect the inflammatory immune system, and discovering the mechanisms through which new classes of drugs with rapid antidepressant effects might be acting.
“In the coming year, I plan to take my research further in establishing mechanistic aspects of depression and Parkinson’s,” he adds, “and hopefully begin to set the groundwork for eventually translating some of these findings into the clinical realm.”
our findings on depression could lead to the development of a novel line of anti-depressants
Analyzing law within public discourse
Dr. Sheryl N. Hamilton is currently the Graduate Supervisor, Communication, and is the former CRC in Communication, Law and Governance.
“Rather than a specific project as a CRC, I had more of a domain of inquiry and development,” she explains. “My work explored issues at the heart of culture, communications and law.”
Hamilton completed a research project on contemporary understandings of the “person”, which culminated in a monograph, called Impersonations: Troubling the Person in Law and Culture.
In the process, she also wrote a textbook, called Law’s Expression: Communication, Law and Media in Canada. “The book explored various ways in which our freedom of expression is constrained and enhanced by modes of legal regulation,” Hamilton explains. “It took on such diverse topics as child pornography, obscenity law, hate speech, defamation, copyright and trademark law, and media in the courtroom.”
Hamilton then co-wrote Becoming Biosubjects: Bodies. Systems. Technologies., which won the Canadian Communication Association best book prize in 2011.
This book explored how subjectivity and governance in Canada were shifting in the face of developments in biotechnology.
Although her term as a CRC is now completed, Hamilton is currently working on a monograph for her last project coming out of the CRC appointment, which discusses the cultural life of a number of high-profile Supreme Court of Canada decisions.
“Law’s meanings are not only constituted in the courtroom but also in the newspapers, blogs, docu-dramas, protest marches and in everyday discussions,” she explains. “I am interested in the ways in which these cases serve as ‘divining rods’ of sorts for the constitution of emotional publics and moral debate within Canadian public discourse.”
Hamilton is also turning her attention to a new collaborative project which will explore what it means to live in pandemic culture, namely in a state of constant awareness of pandemic threat.
“I can say that the CRC was a catalyzing opportunity in my career and one for which I am extremely grateful,” adds Hamilton. “Whenever I have tried to do something at Carleton, the response has always been ‘Sure. How can we help get that off the ground?’ What more can one really ask for as a researcher?”
Law’s meanings are not only constituted in the courtroom but also in the newspapers, blogs, docu-dramas, protest marches and in everyday discussions
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