Current & Recent Research Projects

Researchers at Augustana hold a substantial number of grants and awards each year from agencies such as the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, various levels of government and international organizations.

Below you'll find information on selected current faculty and their research projects.

An outdoor photo of Brandon Alakas

Devotional Literature

Brandon Alakas

Brandon Alakas is a medievalist whose current work explores the ways that sixteenth-century devotional literature facilitates opportunities to rearticulate female identity. His latest project focuses on two unpublished works produced for-and, perhaps, by-the nuns of Syon Abbey after the English Reformation. This work is part of his larger research interest in devotional literature as a platform for political, religious and literary expressions of marginalized communities.

A photo of Julian Forrest's exhibition

Julian Forrest's solo exhibition at Peter Robertson Gallery, March to April, 2018. Photo courtesy of Julian Forrest.

Art & Masculinity

Julian Forrest

Julian Forrest is a painter and fine arts professor who focuses on social constructions of masculinity (archetypes and stereotypes), notions of conquest and role-play, the relationship between industry and landscape (literal, cultural and imagined), as well as migration, alienation and the taming of the (Wild) West.

A portrait of Roxanne Harde

Acquaintance Rape in Young Adult Fiction

Roxanne Harde

Roxanne Harde is a professor of English and a Fulbright Scholar. She researches and teaches American literature and culture, focusing on children’s literature, popular culture, women’s writing, and Indigenous literature. Her most recent book is Consumption & the Literary Cookbook, coedited with Augustana philosophy professor Janet Wesselius (Routledge 2021). Her current SSHRC-funded project is “‘Sexuality as the culture defines it’: Acquaintance Rape in Recent YA Novels.” 

Project information

Glen Hvenegaard on a research trip in a grassy field.

Photo courtesy of Glynnis Hood

Provincial Park Planning

Glen Hvenegaard

Glen Hvenegaard is a professor of Environmental Science and conducts research on parks, bird biogeography, ecotourism and rural sustainability. Presently, he is examining the impacts of park interpretation on visitors, the environmental history of Camrose-based naturalist Frank Farley and Purple Martin conservation. His park interpretation project, entitled "Matching goals and outcomes of park interpretation using the Theory of Planned Behavior: A case study of Alberta's Provincial Parks," is funded by a five-year SSHRC Insight Grant.

More information

A photo of Mi-Young Kim

Artificial Intelligence

Mi-Young Kim

Mi-Young Kim teaches computer science courses and her research interests include natural language processing, artificial intelligence and machine learning, especially in the legal and medical domain. She is currently working on a pilot project, the "Frailty Index from Primary Care Electronic Medical Records Data: Construction, Validation, and Automation," funded by Covenant Health and The Network of Excellence in Seniors' Health and Wellness (NESHW). She is also working on another project entitled "Information extraction from medical/legal text," funded by the Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute.

A photo of Greg King and another man canoeing down a river

Photo courtesy of Mitchell Bonney

Tree-Ring Tales

Greg King

Greg King is an assistant professor of environmental science with a focus on applications of dendrochronology to answer climate and ecological questions in northern and alpine forest ecosystems. He is currently investigating vegetation change across the Bathurst caribou herd in the Northwest Territories both by remote sensing and through canoe-based fieldwork.

A photo of Paula Marentette with a puppet and child's toy phone

Language Learning

Paula Marentette

Paula Marentette is curious about how children think, particularly children who are also just learning language. Her current SSHRC grant "The development of viewpoint in children's gesture production," uses Sammy the Sloth and eye tracking as ways to examine how children think about everyday objects and events.

A portrait of Ardelle Ries

Social Singing

Ardelle Ries

Ardelle Ries is a nationally and internationally recognized music educator with extensive teaching and conducting experience in a wide variety of contexts for all age groups and abilities. Ardelle's SSHRC-funded "Singing the Circle SingAble," research examines the impact of multi-generational choral singing in inclusive settings from social and health and wellness perspectives.