One million dollars in federal research funding will kickstart Lethbridge College’s public safety applied research program.
The funding is the largest social sciences research grant in the post-secondary school’s history.
Eight researchers will work on policing and public safety projects in areas, including police services, corrections and the court system.
The projects are meant to find solutions to real-world problems those sectors are facing.
“This research will really help us to push forward some of those projects,” said Kirsten Fantazir, the president’s applied research chair in public safety at Lethbridge College.
“We have done research before, but this is nice to kind of have a few projects that we can get going at the same time and now we can have a centre of researchers working on endeavours they’ve been looking into.”
The five-year grant is part of the federal government’s college and community innovation program. The program is managed by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Council of Canada, in partnership with the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.
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Public safety and the Canadian criminal justice system are strategic research priorities for Lethbridge College’s executive team and Fantazir believes the work done with this funding can directly impact students.
“We have criminal justice policing and correctional studies diplomas and a bachelor of applied arts in justice studies,” Fantazir said. “With that foundation we were able to springboard into the research world, where we can actually involve our students in the process.
“(It’s) really exciting for a lot us who are in research, not only because we like them to get a glimpse in terms of what research is and how it can impact the community, but also it gives them the skills so they might want to move forward after graduation and pursue their own research.”
Fantazir’s research will focus on collaborating with Blackfoot and other Indigenous peoples to support knowledge sharing related to public safety field.
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