Last month, the Queen's Gazette highlighted the recipients of the federal Insight and Partnership Grants, awarded through the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC). These grants are part of a larger $1.3 billion federal investment in Canadian research, with over $240 million allocated to the social sciences and humanities. As reported by the Gazette, “Close to 50 researchers at Queen’s have secured $11.5 million across four SSHRC programs.”
Among these researchers are five scholars from the Faculty of Education, who have secured funding to support projects that promise to advance equity, innovation, and impact within the education sector. We spoke with each of them to learn how their projects will take shape over the coming years—and how their work is poised to influence educational research and practice at regional, national, and global levels.
The Partnership Developemnt Grants support the creation of new partnerships or the refinement of existing ones, helping to develop collaborative research models, best practices, or scalable innovations. Funding of up to $200,000 is available over three years.
Dr. Patty Douglas: Telling Our Stories: A Photovoice Project with Diverse Autistic Youth in Northern Ontario
Patty’s groundbreaking community-engaged research project, “Telling our Stories (TOS)” is flipping the script on autism research and services. Rather than emphasizing deficits or pressuring autistic youth to conform to rigid systems, TOS centers the voices and leadership of autistic youth—particularly those in Indigenous and rural communities who often experience culturally unsafe care, under-resourced programs, and systems that overlook their strengths and lived realities.
At the heart of the project is Photovoice—a participatory and empowering method that invites youth to express their experiences through photography and storytelling. In doing so, participants are not merely subjects of research; they become co-researchers, artists, and advocates, with agency over how their narratives are shared and understood.
Over the next three years, Patty’s team will extend this work beyond storytelling. They will review existing autism research focused on norther and Indigenous communities and map the current landscape of youth services in these regions to identify systemic gaps. Building on these insights, they will co-design new, culturally grounded supports and mobilize their findings through academic publications, community presentations, art exhibitions, and policy briefs.
What sets this SSHRC-funded project apart is its foundation in neurodiversity-affirming and Indigenous frameworks—approaches that honour non-traditional ways of thinking, moving, and experiencing the world. Rather than seeking to “fix” youth, Telling Our Stories focuses on how youth can thrive on their own terms, within their own cultural and community contexts.
It's also about driving systemic change. Through collaboration with Queen’s University and five community partners—including Algoma Family Services, Autism Alliance Canada, Autism Ontario, Finding Our Power Together, and the Re•Storying Autism Collective—TOS seeks to shape everything from local programming to national initiatives such as the Federal Autism Strategy and “Ontario’s Journey to Belonging”.
Led by Dr. Patty Douglas and a diverse team of researchers—including Elizabeth Straus (University of Guelph), Nicole Ineese-Nash (Toronto Metropolitan University), and Nicole J. Bobbette (Queen’s University)—TOS will mentor and train 36 emerging scholars and students, with a strong emphasis on centering Indigenous and autistic voices throughout the process. The aim is to fundamentally reimagine how autism and youth services are understood and delivered, particularly in communities where one-size-fits-all solutions fall short.
Read about the other major SSHRC-funded projects at the Faculty of Education