Celebrating 5 Years of the CERi Awards

What did it mean to you to receive a CERi CER Award?

It meant a very great deal to me, personally, to receive an award from CERi. I have the greatest respect for CERi, and the commitment of the Institute to the core principles of participation, cooperation, social transformation, and knowledge translation. CERi walks the walk when it comes to ethical, transformative, and horizontal forms of research engagement. It has created and held a space for CER against all the odds. My path towards community engaged research has been hesitant, slow, and far from perfect. But in various ways, over the past few decades, I have tried to do research in a less extractive manner. For CERi to honour my work through the award was thus deeply significant.

Can you share what kind of impact (if any) it has had for you?

Practically, the cash that came from the award proved helpful in maintaining and sustaining on the ground community engaged research. Our research team used the funding to provide support for an Indigenous film-maker, who worked on a proposal to support a film that would build from our ongoing research on the organized theft of unhoused people's personal belongings (via sweeps etc), centring the colonial dimensions of the process. More personally, the award provided valued institutional affirmation for community engaged scholarship, giving me a firmer commitment to CER going forward.

Anything else you wish to share as a recipient of a CER award?

I felt that it was wrong to be the only nominee from a wonderful research team, that had enacted community engaged research in related ways, so I was delighted when two of my graduate students, Claire Shapton and Marina Chavez, also received CERi awards in the same year. Community engaged research works best when it draws from and helps create a community of scholarship, including graduate students!

As SFU Community Engaged Research Initiative (SFU CERi) celebrates 5 years of community impact through the Community Engaged Research Initiative Award, I am personally grateful for this milestone. In 2024, I received the SFU CERi Award as part of the Black Support Society initiative that was birthed from my time as an SFU CERi fellow. Through the fellowship program, I had the opportunity to go further with my graduate thesis project to bring it into the community that was most impacted by inequitable access to crucial services that shape an individual and a community’s well-being and health.

The Black Central initiative was launched at the very place that brought community and research together, making communities owners and leaders of their own stories, evidence and research. This project brings together community members of Black, African and Caribbean communities, leveraging grassroots organizations and businesses to be leaders in providing culturally appropriate, aware and inclusive services that were often not reached nor accessed by their communities due to inequitable access informed by evidenced structural barriers. Today, members have a centralized and integrated platform to easily navigate and reach health, educational, justice, housing and financial resources and services all in one place at subsidized rates.

Receiving the CER Award helped Black Society bring over 100 community members, leaders, researchers and business owners in one room to chart a new and shared vision of improving access to underserved community members. Using CER principles of community-engaged research and consensus planning approaches, community members were able to rank and prioritize key services that they wanted to see on the platform. A key outcome was a clear mapping of community-perceived barriers to accessing needed services and shared design of the platform to make navigation and access to resources easier.

This project is a success story of meaningful intentional community-engaged research. When communities are involved in telling their own stories, facilitating their own solutions with the support of institutional knowledge and resources, there can be sustainable and meaningful change that makes research far more impactful and reaching.

I was honoured to receive the CERi Community-Engaged Graduate Scholar Award in 2022 while completing my Masters in Public Policy at SFU. I received the award for research conducted with Dr. Kora DeBeck (Professor, School of Public Policy) and community members, including Dean Wilson, Kali Sedgemore, and Paige Phillips. The award was a meaningful recognition of the value of community-engaged research and, importantly, of the expertise and leadership that people who use drugs bring to research.

Receiving the CERi award helped support and reinforce my commitment to community-engaged research and to ensuring that research reflects the priorities and experiences of people most affected by drug policy. The research highlighted community reports that the unregulated drug supply had become increasingly toxic during the COVID-19 pandemic and the urgent need for interventions, including a regulated safer supply. This recognition also helped me to continue building a research program grounded in meaningful community partnership.

One of the community members I worked alongside on this research, Paige Phillips, has since passed away as a result of the toxic drug supply. Paige was a fierce advocate who fought tirelessly for her community. I hope that recognitions like the CERi award can continue to create opportunities to amplify the voices, expertise, and priorities of people who use drugs, and contribute to the urgent work of preventing overdose mortality.

What did it mean to you to receive a CERi CER Award?

It was genuinely quite heartwarming. I was especially touched that a colleague in Urban Studies nominated me, and given how many excellent community-engaged researchers there are, I really wasn’t expecting to receive the award. I joked at the ceremony that I rarely win anything, so it was a wonderful surprise! More seriously, though, it was incredibly meaningful to be recognized specifically for community-engaged research. There are very few opportunities that acknowledge the often invisible labour involved in doing this work well; the time spent building relationships, showing up, listening, developing trust, navigating different priorities, and working alongside communities over the long term. I’ve been doing community-engaged research for close to 15 years, and it has become less a methodology I “use” and more part of my identity as a researcher. It was therefore particularly satisfying to have that work seen and valued.

Can you share what kind of impact it has had for you?

The award has strengthened my confidence in positioning community engagement as a core area of my research expertise, particularly in grant applications and new collaborations. It has also helped make this work more visible to students and trainees, who increasingly approach me because they want to learn how to undertake community-engaged research themselves. Perhaps most importantly, it has strengthened my relationship with CERi and opened opportunities for new partnerships, conversations, and collaborations. That has been an especially valuable outcome because the award did not simply recognize past work - it has helped create possibilities for what comes next.

Anything else you wish to share as a recipient of a CER award?

Community-engaged research has become increasingly prominent in academic and funding language, which is encouraging, but I think it is important that we continue to recognize what genuine engagement requires. It is not simply about having community partners named on a grant or consulting people at particular stages of a project. It requires sustained commitment, reciprocity, humility, and a willingness to be present for the everyday work of building relationships. That is why I’m so grateful that CERi has created an award that recognizes this kind of scholarship. Much of the work happens quietly and over many years, so having a space where it is seen, celebrated, and encouraged really does matter. I’m very grateful to have received the award and look forward to continuing to build this work in partnership with CERi and the communities we serve.

Photo Gallery - CERi Awards Throughout the Years