Deadline: April 1, 2025

SSHRC Impact Awards are designed to build on and sustain Canada’s research-based knowledge culture in all research areas of the social sciences and humanities. The awards recognize outstanding researchers and celebrate their research achievements, research training, knowledge mobilization, and outreach activities funded partially or entirely by SSHRC.

Impact Award recipients are to use award funds for activities that promote and further develop the work being honoured. In recognition of the crucial role postsecondary institutions play in mobilizing research knowledge, at least 10% of each award must be used to promote the recipient’s research achievements. Individual recipients and their institutions can choose to devote additional funds, including a higher percentage of the award funds, to these activities.

Benefits

• Gold Medal ($100,000): The Gold Medal is SSHRC’s highest research honour. It is awarded to an individual whose sustained leadership, dedication, and originality of thought have inspired both students and colleagues. The recipient’s achievements must have significantly advanced understanding in their respective fields of research in the social sciences and humanities. The exceptional quality and impact of the recipient’s research, and their ongoing efforts to share the results of this work, must have greatly enriched Canadian society and contributed to intellectual, cultural, social, and/or economic life in Canada and/or internationally.
• Talent Award ($50,000): The Talent Award recognizes outstanding achievement by an individual who, on April 1, 2025, holds a SSHRC doctoral scholarship or fellowship or postdoctoral fellowship. This includes, but is not limited to, a Canada Graduate Scholarship, Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship, or Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship. The Talent Award is given to an individual who maintains academic excellence, has a talent for research and knowledge mobilization, and has demonstrated clear potential to be a future leader within and/or outside the academic sector.
• Insight Award ($50,000): The Insight Award recognizes outstanding achievement arising from a single or multiple SSHRC-funded initiatives. It is given to an individual or a team of six people maximum (including the nominee) whose initiative or initiatives have significantly contributed to knowledge and understanding about people, societies, and the world. The research outcomes must have led to a demonstrable impact within the nominee’s fields of research and/or beyond the social sciences and humanities research community. In the case of team initiatives, the nominee must be the principal investigator. If successful, this person will receive the award on behalf of the team.
• Connection Award ($50,000): The Connection Award recognizes an outstanding SSHRC-funded initiative that facilitates the flow and exchange of research knowledge within and/or beyond the social sciences and humanities research community. It is given to an individual or a team of six people maximum (including the nominee) whose initiative has engaged the campus and/or wider community and has generated intellectual, cultural, social, and/or economic impacts. In the case of a team initiative, the nominee must be the initiative’s applicant/project director. If successful, this person will receive the award on behalf of the team.
• Partnership Award ($50,000): The Partnership Award recognizes a SSHRC‑funded formal partnership for its outstanding achievement in advancing research, research training, or knowledge mobilization, or developing a new partnership approach to research and/or related activities. It is awarded to a formal partnership that, through cooperation and shared intellectual leadership and resources, has demonstrated impact and influence within and/or beyond the social sciences and humanities research community. While the Partnership Award recognizes a formal partnership, one project lead must be designated as the nominee to administer the award. However, up to two project co-leads from the winning partnership can be invited to accept the award on behalf of the partnership at the Impact Awards ceremony.

Eligibility

A nominee must:

• be a citizen or permanent resident of Canada, or a “protected person” under subsection 95(2) of Canada’s Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, by the nomination deadline
• be an active social sciences and humanities researcher or student
• hold or have held SSHRC funding relevant to the award category
• be in good standing with SSHRC
• be affiliated with an institution that meets the institutional eligibility requirements, and
• maintain affiliation with an eligible institution for the duration of the Impact Award.

Nominees:

• cannot nominate themselves
• can be nominated in two sequential years for the same award, following which two years must pass before they can be nominated in the same category
• can be nominated in only one category in any year
• can be nominated in a subsequent year for a different SSHRC Impact Award; and
• cannot be a current member of SSHRC’s governing council, a previous Gold Medal winner, or a SSHRC Impact Awards jury member.

To be eligible to administer an award, the institution affiliated with an Impact Award winner must provide SSHRC with a promotion strategy (two pages maximum) outlining a proposed approach for promoting and celebrating the impact and outcomes of the award winner’s research initiative.

Institutions affiliated with an Impact award winner are invited to contact SSHRC to help develop this strategy and collaborate with SSHRC’s Communications Division to promote its winners and/or finalists.

Nomination

Eligible institutions are invited to put forward nominations for all SSHRC Impact Award categories. Each institution can submit only one nomination for each award in a given year, up to a maximum of five SSHRC Impact Award nominations. Institutions must provide the name and contact information of a person to whom SSHRC will send all questions and correspondence, including results.

The nomination package must include the nominee’s tri-agency CV and those of any team members (up to five), if applicable.

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