Professor Evan Fraser earns award from Pierre Trudeau Foundation
Tuesday, Sept. 16 was an extraordinary day for Department of Geography Professor Evan Fraser, who made history for the University of Guelph. It was recently announced that Fraser received one of three nationally awarded Trudeau Fellowships to aid in his research. This is the first time that a faculty member of the University of Guelph has been given this prestigious award.
The Trudeau Foundation, founded in 2001, strives to “promote outstanding research in the humanities and social sciences, and fosters a fruitful dialogue between scholars and policymakers in the arts community, business, government, the professions, and the voluntary sector.” The foundation has been successful since its conception, and offers generous opportunities for scholars of Canadian academia to make a difference in the lives of many.
For Fraser, this fellowship will allow him to further pursue his research and projects aiming to deal with the issues of global food security. Fraser has recently created an initiative named “Feeding Nine Billion,” which aims to demonstrate the challenges faced in dealing with a growing human population.
Fraser joined the University of Guelph in 2010 as a member of the Canada Research Chair in Global Human Security and has shown tremendous influence amongst others at the University of Guelph. Fraser also co-wrote the book Empires of Food: Feast, Famine and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations, which stresses the importance of facing the challenges brought on by global food security.
“I firmly believe that all academics, but especially people who have high-profile appointments such as Trudeau Fellowships, have an obligation to devote significant effort to communicating with non-academic audiences,” said Fraser. “This means not only writing for non-academic audiences, speaking to community groups, and being interviewed by the media, but also engaging with social media sources.”
Fraser plans to incorporate various social media outlets as a way to inform the message of global food security. As social media grows larger as a means of creating awareness, Fraser’s projects are hoping to create a practical and accessible insight towards the challenges that come with a growing human population.
Fraser was also notified on that same day that he was elected to a newly formed branch of the Royal Society College (RSC). The College of New Scholars aims “to gather scholars, artists and scientists at a highly productive stage of their careers into a single collegium where new advances in understanding will emerge from the interaction of diverse intellectual, cultural, and social perspectives.”
Fraser’s research and projects have garnered attention from many well-known scholars and prestigious institutions. “This award is exciting for a number of reasons,” Fraser said about his induction into the newly formed college. “In particular, it is an endorsement of the important research program that I and my colleagues are working on. Maintaining global food security over the next generation is one of humanity’s greatest challenges, and this is the topic that a large number of us are trying to better understand.“