A graduate student with the Faculty of Education has recently been awarded travel funding through the SSHRC Michael Smith Foreign Study Supplement to support research related to her thesis work in Europe.

Vanessa Johnson, a SSHRC funded masters student on the Fredericton campus, will be packing her bags for an extensive research trip abroad this fall thanks to a travel opportunity available to Canada Graduate Scholarship holders nationwide. Vanessa will also be receiving travel support for her summer and fall adventures through the Pam and John Little Overseas Scholarship, which she was awarded early in the fall.

Her travel plans aim to take her from Newfoundland in the summer, to the United Kingdom in the fall, where she will work alongside a local researcher to conduct work at the British National Archives. While in Europe, she will also travel to France to conduct research onsite at Beaumont-Hamel.

Vanessa's thesis work examines the relationship between Newfoundland's Great War history, the province's collective memory of the time period, Beaumont-Hamel commermorative activity, and history education practices. Her research investigates how the story of the infamous Newfoundland experience at Beaumont-Hamel during the 1916 Battle of the Somme has been employed by historians, governments, and educators in the past century.

Vanessa, along with her supervisors Dr. Alan Sears and Dr. Lee Windsor, hope the travel and research experience will shed more light on how the educational institutions approach the study of the Royal Newfoundland Regiment in the great war with an aim to provide a new approach in educating on the Great War.

Want to learn more about travel funding opportunities? Visit our website.