Dr. Can Mutlu awarded SSHRC Insight Development Grant
Dr. Can Mutlu (Politics) was recently awarded an Insight Development Grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) for his project "Designing Border Security."
The grant is valued at $65,482 over 2 years.
The SSHRC Insight Development Grant supports research in its initial stages, aiming to build knowledge and understanding about people, societies and the world by supporting research excellence in all subject areas in the social sciences and humanities. The grants enable the development of new research questions, as well as experimentation with new methods, theoretical approaches and/or ideas.
Designing Border Security
Project Description: "Recent contributions to security studies literature have focused on the role of discourses, materialities,and practices that emphasize the everyday social effects of security practices and policies. Yet they have
done so without focusing on the translation processes that result in architectural alterations to physical spaces such as airports, border crossings, container ports, embassies, or public squares, among other spaces, in detail. With the Designing Border Security project, we plan to conduct a pilot study on the architectural elements that enhance the security of four recently renovated Canada-US border crossings in order to understand the role of architecture in security.
To conceptualize the relationship between architecture and security, the Designing Border Security project is
structured around a three-stage data collection process that include a comprehensive interdisciplinary literature review, archival research, and semistructured interviews. The first portion will focus on conducting literature reviews in architecture, human geography, sociology, and security studies. As part of the archival research, we plan to conduct research in Canadian and American national archives on border (security) installations, to trace historical developments at the nexus of architecture and border security. Finally, by conducting interviews with architects and policy makers on both sides of the Canada-US border involved with four recently renovated ports of entry we plan to get a clearer sense of the translation process that leads to creation of secure, yet aesthetically pleasing, border crossing infrastructures."
Congratulations to Dr. Mutlu!