Knowledge Mobilization

Through Knowledge Mobilization, CIFAR communicates its knowledge breakthroughs to inform key decision-makers and those that will most benefit from the direct engagement with researchers. They include decision makers in the public, private and non-profit sectors.
CIFAR typically hosts from three to six KMb events every year. Examples of these over the last two years have involved three of its programs. These events disseminated CIFAR research to a range of audiences, including government, business & industry, NGOs, pan-governmental organizations, and practitioners.


Some highlights:

Joint Meeting with the Royal Society of Canada on “How Early Experience Affects Lifetime Health”

In March 2011, CIFAR Fellow Clyde Hertzman, a member of the Experience-based Brain and Biological Development program and the Successful Societies program, gave a private briefing to heads of public and private organizations involved in the delivery of health care and social services in Ottawa, Canada. His key messages were that data now show that the experiences of children prior to formal schooling already define the developmental vulnerabilities they must overcome to be successful students and be productive members of the workforce. Investments in early development have a return-on-investment of approximately 10-to-1, but have to be deployed with the appropriate mix of coordinated interventions.


Seminar on Building Resilience in an Age of Crisis

In November 2010, CIFAR hosted in collaboration with York University's Hennick Centre for Business and Law a seminar addressing how organizations deal with and attempt to manage crisis. When Lehman Brothers failed, was it a failure of corporate risk management, or corporate crisis management, or both? Did BP properly plan for the crisis created by the run-away Macondo Well in the Gulf of Mexico? It has become clear that not having adequate risk-management systems and acting accordingly can lead to a downturn in public confidence, and can easily become viral. This event involved a public seminar drawing 150 participants, and then a private consultation involving Daniel Diermeier, Fellow of CIFAR’s Institutions, Organizations and Growth program and several key public figures with a number of private and public sector leaders.


Book Launch and Symposium at the World Bank

In May 2010, Fellows Peter Hall, Michele Lamont and Peter Evans of CIFAR’s Successful Societies program took part in a panel discussion at the World Bank to launch the program’s collaboratively written book, Successful Societies: How Institutions and Culture Affect Health. The standing-room-only audience was comprised of interdisciplinary academics, practitioners, and members of NGOs. Reaction to the group’s presentation revealed that many policy makers continue to view culture as a set of values, rather than a dynamic process that people use to construct meaning in their everyday lives. Likewise, policy makers tend to view institutions as sets of rules, as opposed to ritual systems of interaction that determine legitimacy. The lively discussion raised questions about whether policy makers can or should take actions to change culture and institutions.


Symposium on Learnings from the Global Economic Crisis

In March 2010, CIFAR joined forces with the Centre for Global Challenges to present After The Meltdown: The Limits and Possibilities of Economics. The symposium brought together three of CIFAR’s preeminent economists – Pierre Fortin (Canada), Tim Besley (UK), and Nobel Laureate George Akerlof (US) – to discuss what the world has learned from the global economic crisis. The event was attended by more than 150 invited senior academics, government officials and business leaders.


Special Lecture on Multiculturalism Policy

In September 2009, Irene Bloemraad, a Scholar in CIFAR’s Social Interactions, Identity and Well-Being (SIIWB) program, presented her recent work on multiculturalism policy at a special lecture in Halifax co-sponsored by The Metropolis Centre in Atlantic Canada. The Centre is a consortium of academic researchers, government representatives, and non-governmental organizations dedicated to pursuing policy-relevant research related to immigration, population migrations, and cultural diversity. Thirty people attended Dr. Bloemraad’s talk entitled “Canadian Exceptionalism? Multiculturalism and Immigrants’ Political Integration in Comparative Perspective.” The diverse audience included members of the Atlantic Metropolis Centres at both Dalhousie and St. Mary’s Universities, representatives from Citizenship & Immigration Canada, the Nova Scotia Office of Immigration, and the Maritime Immigrant Settlement Association, and faculty members and students from Dalhousie’s Departments of Economics, Sociology and Political Science.


Research Symposium on Seniors, Social Connections and Health

In August 2009, CIFAR co-sponsored a half-day research symposium with the Schlegel-UW Research Institute for Aging, held at the University of Waterloo. The symposium focused on research exploring how and why social activity improves and protects health and well-being for seniors. Alex Haslam, a Fellow in CIFAR’s Social Interactions, Identity and Well-Being (SIIWB) program, and his colleagues shared their latest research on “the social cure.” More than sixty people attended, including academics from the Departments of Health Studies and Gerontology and other disciplines, practitioners from long-term care facilities, public health workers, representatives from the local Community Care Access Centre, members of the philanthropic community and interested members of the public.