CanadianPhDinUSA

Looking at the merit review committee compositions is very frustrating. Once again, for the fifth year in a row, there is not a single person who studies Africa or Latin America on Committee 2A or Committee 2b. For the first time in that many years, there is also nobody who studies Asia on Committee 2, and Middle East/Arab World representation has also diminished to only one reviewer. Of the 16 reviewers on Committee 2A and 2B, 15 of them study Western Europe or Canada.

Didn't get it, this was my last year of eligibility, student at a US university. I'm interested to know the make-up of committee 2 this year, because there hasn't been a single Latin Americanist or Africanist scholar on committee 2 in the past 5 years. Is anyone else frustrated that they've changed the scoring system from last year with little indication of how the two systems are related? I have no idea if my application improved on or was worse than last year's. Committee 752-2A Score: 9.13/12 Rank: 80/160 Last funded application: 61/160. 9.71/12.

Who did you contact for this information? My results letter says SSHRC doesn't do this for anybody?

For the third year in a row, not a single person on Selection Committees 2A or 2B studies Latin America or sub-Saharan Africa. The geographic bias is strong.

Rejected yet again, have one more shot. Direct applicant, US university, submitted to Committee 2 and received a score of 12.15. Two conference presentations, one publication as translator, 6 months of archival experience in Latin American archives from my MA and internal award-funded research trips during my PhD coursework, etc... etc... I might be somewhat bitter (I've made earlier posts commenting on the absolute paucity of award winning projects about Africa or Latin America from all committees) but there must be a geographic bias to the selection process. SSHRC has posted the selection committee members for previous years, and for both 2018 and 2019, out of a total 23 different reviewers on committees 2A and 2B (where my application goes as a historian), none of the reviewers studied Africa or Latin America. 20 out of 23 do Canada/Western Europe, and 3 do East/South/Southeast Asia. I suppose if you count the scholar of Ancient Christianity whose work occasionally touches Coptic texts or the scholar of Ancient Rome whose work occasionally encounters Ptolemaic Egypt, then sure, Africa is "represented." But otherwise, I can't imagine that a selection committee whose geographic interests are so confined would be able to judge the merits of projects outside of that limited range (e.g. three whole other continents).

I'm not sure that Latin America is really an uncommon field of research though, when you consider that it would include any project about Brazil, Mexico, Cuba, Venezuela, which are all pretty common locations for research when you factor in history, sociology, anthropology, environmental studies/ecology, education/curriculum/instruction, Atlantic studies, and poli sci dissertations. It's like 700 million people + at least 100 million more living in the UK/US/Canada. I could be wrong, but I feel like (and it is indeed just a hunch) more than 1.2% of Canadian humanities/soc sci PhD dissertations have to do with a Latin American country or Latin American people (assuming that the percentage of awards given to a particular field roughly corresponds with the percentage of PhDs that are pursued in that field out of total Canadian humanities/soc sci PhDs generally).

After this morning's mini heart attack email, I did the usual thing of discouraging myself by looking at past award winners. Does anyone else feel like SSHRC is weighted against their field? For the past two years, there have been 9 awards each year for topics about Latin America and that's including all eligible disciplines. Out of a total 1048, only 18 were related to topics about Latin America or Latin American people. I can't be the only one whose field is so underrepresented, who else is with me.

@BTF So I'm only just now starting the third year of the PhD program here (my first application was submitted in the final year of my MA at a Canadian institution, on the basis that I would hold the award at my current institution). I've got no sole author publications but I am cited as a translator from Spanish to English in a forthcoming Latin American history publication, I have presented at conferences, and I've received only As (4.0) on my PhD transcripts. Regarding publications, I don't actually know of any history student who has published prior to becoming a dissertator; of the two history students I know who've been awarded SSHRC (one in Canada, and one at my institution here), neither one has a single publication (and I had both of them look over my program of study several times prior to submission). Generally, history students don't publish until they've been dissertating for at least a year, for example our two new hires, from Harvard and Michigan, didn't get their first publications until the sixth years of their programs, and even my advisor didn't get his first publication in History until the fifth year of his program (he'd had about 7 years of surgery publications under his belt by that time though). That only one award out of 1026 was given to a Latin American history dissertation leads me to believe perhaps we (Latin Americanists) are just not *it* for Canadian reviewers? I've been fairly successful with internal awards at my institution (and am not yet eligible for SSRC's IDRF because COVID fucked up my in-field research plans for my prospectus so I don't know how I fare at that level just yet).

Denied third year in a row, 12.1 with no waitlist (I forget which committee but I'm in a History program). I could be feeling bitter but it seems to me there are just some topics that Canadian reviewers don't care about? I reviewed all 1026 awards that started in 2019 (518 CGS-D and 508 Doctoral Fellowships) and there were only 11 on Latin American topics (1% of the total awards given) and of these only one went to a specifically history-oriented project (0.097%). Further, I'm at a US school and only 33 awards total (out of 1,026) went to Canadian students in the US. Am I essentially just SOL for SSHRC? I've got one more chance to apply, wondering if it's actually worth my time with those odds.