Western is establishing the Western Academy for Advanced Research effective April 1, 2021.

This new initiative is an opportunity to bring together diverse research, scholarship, and creative activity from across campus, to partner with scholars around the world, to work as a collective, and to help find solutions to the major issues of our time.

The Academy will solicit proposals of themes from groups of faculty and postdoctoral scholars from across faculties, schools, and departments at Western, and proposed partners from around the world. It will provide the infrastructure necessary to organize and facilitate these themes, identify and attract participants, and disseminate results.

This initiative will enable us to support the secondment of Western Fellows, attract Visiting Western Fellows, and identify Western Academy Postdoctoral Fellows, who will, though a period of focused enquiry, dedicate their intellectual energies to these identified themes. Results will be captured in a high-quality monograph and be delivered through a public lecture series.

Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Stable Isotope Science, Fred Longstaffe, will serve as the Academy’s founding Director. The university has committed to investing in, and supporting, this initiative, which is being championed by the offices of the Vice-President (Research) and Provost, for at least the next three years.