Residential Programs

Residential programs focus on bringing together distinguished researchers, from both the University of British Columbia and around the world, to spend time at the Institute. These residencies, ranging in term from one month to one year, encourage the interaction of scholars from a variety of disciplines in exploring new research direction.

The Peter Wall Distinguished Professor is a unique appointment by the University President directed at attracting or retaining a world-class scholar who is be expected to have a major impact on broad areas of scholarly work at UBC. The endowment provides salary support for a renewable five-year term.

The Distinguished Scholars in Residence program, targeted at senior Associate and Full Professors, was developed to bring to the Institute outstanding, tenure-track UBC faculty members with distinguished research records and commitment to interdisciplinarity. The appointment includes a $15,000 infrastructure award, as well as up to an additional $5,000 for a research initiative linked to a scholar's residence at the Institute.

The Early Career Scholars program brings together outstanding tenure-track faculty from diverse disciplines at the early stages of their careers at UBC. Beginning with the 2009 competition, the program will be directed at untenured Assistant Professors in their first two years at the University. The appointment includes a $10,000 infrastructure award.

In the Distinguished Visiting Professor program, from time to time a distinguished senior scholar with a reputation for interdisciplinary engagement spends time in residence at the Institute. It is expected that the Visiting Professor will pursue a specific scholarly agenda, participate in Institute programs and events, and organize a specific activity or activities intended to contribute to the intellectual life of the Institute and its affiliated scholars.

The Wall Summer Institute for Research is an intensive workshop involving up to 15 outstanding interdisciplinary fellows in residence, invited from around the world, to debate, discuss, and push forward thinking on a cutting-edge research question with select scholars from the University of British Columbia. This is followed several months later by a weekend research retreat in another part of the world.

The Wall Exchange is a new, community program created by the Institute to provide a public forum for the discussion of key issues which impact us all including genomics, the future of imagination, and children at risk. Events will be held each year in the Spring and Fall and will feature a well known public figure who has contributed new knowledge to the Arts, Sciences, and Humanities.

2008 Distinguished Scholars in Residence

Margery Fee
Professor, English

Margery Fee has shaped national understanding of Canadian literature, culture, and regional and national forms of Canadian English usage. She has also become an influential figure within global indigenous and postcolonial studies, as measured in her numerous publications, research grants, editorships, and plenary addresses.

Dr. Fee completed her doctorate in English at the University of Toronto in 1981. Since taking up her position at UBC as an Associate Professor in 1993, she has held a number of prominent administrative positions in the Faculty of Arts at the same time as maintaining her role as a highly productive and innovative scholar. Dr. Fee’s longstanding interest in Aboriginal issues, postcolonial studies, narrative, and racialization merged in her recent article, “Racializing Narratives: Obesity, Diabetes and the ‘Aboriginal’ Thrifty Genotype,” in Social Science and Medicine (2006). This study set her on a path that led to her year at the Peter Wall Institute, where she has forged new networks and generated a considerable number of papers as well as two grant applications.

Dr. Fee held a Scholar in Residence Workshop in October 2009.