EDGES members, Manvi Bhalla and Rachel Stern, has been awarded Public Scholar Awards through UBC’s Public Scholars Initiative (PSI). Congratulations, Rachel and Manvi!
The PSI reimagines doctoral education in ways that facilitate purposeful social contribution, the production of new and creative forms of scholarship and dissertations, and support graduate students’ broader career perspectives. Up to $20,000 per student is available to support dissertation scholarship that the students would otherwise be unable to pursue.
Manvi’s funded project (Co-Imagining Just Futures: Advancing Intersectional Environmental Justice in Canadian Environmental Health Policy-Making) focuses on investigating environmental health inequities experienced by South Asian communities in Toronto, Vancouver, and surrounding areas. Her research aims to: (1) capture the impacts of exposure to environmental hazards (e.g., pollutants) and access to benefits (e.g., outdoor green spaces) on the holistic health and wellbeing of South Asians, particularly new immigrants; (2) explore their knowledge and understanding of environmental health risk; and (3) co-create recommendations for environmental health regulatory policies to better serve racially, ethnically and gender-minoritized peoples. Through collaboration with the community partner Women’s Healthy Environments Network (WHEN) and with the support of knowledge mobilization partners Laadliyan and the South Asian Health Institute (SAHI), this research seeks to inform health advocacy and contribute to the public good by ensuring the unique needs of marginalized South Asian communities are recognized in environmental health policymaking.
Rachel’s funded project (Interdisciplinary and Mixed-Methods Approaches to Extreme Heat: A Community Participatory Study of Older Adults’ Heat Experiences in Metro Vancouver) is focused at the intersection of extreme heat, housing justice and aging in Metro Vancouver. In the wake of the deadly 2021 heat dome in British Columbia, Rachel seeks to understand heat vulnerability, especially for older adults in Metro Vancouver. Her research employs visual, oral and archival participatory methods to document and share older adults’ experiences of extreme heat. Her project is a collaboration with fellow PSI scholar Katherine White, and combines diaries, oral histories and sensor data from a group of older adults in South Vancouver to create a fuller picture of their experiences at home and in their neighborhood during heat events. They explore how different quantitative and qualitative methodologies can work together to tell stories about how different bodies, homes and neighborhoods experience extreme heat.
More information on the PSI, Rachel’s project, and Manvi’s project can be found via the links.