News Releases & Announcements

OTTAWA, September 17, 2008 — Women researchers at the University of Ottawa have made 2008 a banner year. And tomorrow, September 18, three of them, professors Constance Backhouse, Ruby Heap and Shana Poplack, will see their achievements highlighted at the annual Celebration of Excellence in Research and Teaching..

The Celebration of Excellence in Research and Teaching pays tribute to more than 30 uOttawa professors having garnered prestigious internal and external awards like the Steacie Memorial Fellowship, the Sloan Research Fellowship Award, Canada Research Chairs, the Ontario Early Research Award and the University of Ottawa Award for Excellence in Research.

Professors Backhouse, Heap and Poplack have respectively been awarded a Killam Prize, a Fullbright Scholarship and a 2008 Premier's Discovery Award.

Constance Backhouse
One of Canada’s foremost experts on women and the law, and a highly regarded scholar and human-rights advocate, Ms. Backhouse, full professor at the Faculty of Law, Common Law Section, has garnered many distinctions and awards for her path-breaking writing on sexual harassment in the workplace and on other forms of gender and race discrimination. She is one of five scholars from universities across Canada to receive a 2008 Killam Prize, given annually by the Canada Council for the Arts. A $100,000 award accompanies each prize. Professor Backhouse also became a Member of the Order of Canada this year.

Ruby Heap
Professor Ruby Heap, an historian specializing in women’s history and science, will be the Fulbright Visiting Chair in Canadian Studies at Kennesaw State University. In addition, she will work with high-level researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology’s Center for the Study of Women, Science and Technology. Her research focuses both on women who have completed graduate studies and on women and their careers, with a special emphasis on women in engineering. She is coordinator of the University of Ottawa Women in Engineering Research Group. In addition, Professor Heap is the founding director of the Institute of Women’s Studies and has been assistant vice-dean at the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies since 2001.

Shana Poplack
World-renowned sociolinguist Shana Poplack studies language as it is actually spoken, especially in bilingual and minority-language settings, in Canada and abroad. She is the founding director of the Sociolinguistics Research Laboratory, the premier facility of its kind in the country. Professor Poplack is Distinguished University Professor and Canada Research Chair in Linguistics. Last year’s winner of both the Killam Prize and the Trudeau Fellowship Award, she is among the four accomplished Ontario researchers who received a 2008 Premier’s Discovery Award. The Premier’s Discovery Awards celebrate the scientific achievements of Ontario’s top researchers.

Out of 1219 regular professors at the University of Ottawa, 435 are women.

WHAT: Reception in celebration of excellence in research and teaching

WHEN: Thursday, September 18, 2008 at 4 p.m.

WHERE: Tabaret Hall, Room 112 (550 Cumberland Street, Ottawa)