Undergraduate Student Summer Research Fellowships
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The USSRF provides an opportunity for continuing undergraduate students at Queen’s to develop their research skills under the guidance of a faculty researcher. The program is intended to provide students with meaningful opportunities to engage in discovery based learning and to develop research and presentation skills. It is targeted to students enrolled in social sciences, humanities and education, where summer student research is typically less available.
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Recent Submissions
Item Women, Peace, and Security: Analyzing NATO Gender Policies(Queen's University, 2021) Fox, MorganThis presentation, in the three-minute thesis format, is the culmination of more than four months of work researching NATO’s implementation of the Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) agenda. Much of this research was attempting to answer two questions: how has NATO integrated WPS into its operations and policies, and what determines successful gender analysis norm-building? In this presentation I outline my research process, some major hypotheses, specific case studies, and the field work I did in October 2021.Item Connecting Unspoken Elements through the Use of Leitmotif in Undertale(Queen's University, 2021) Cantarutti, JoeyThis research poster demonstrates the various usages of the musical element known as Leitmotif throughout the 2015 video game Undertale created by Toby Fox. Leitmotifs are defined as a theme in any media that becomes associated with a character, place, situation, or emotion. In Undertale, the musical themes and motifs connect to specific narrative characters and plot lines by suggesting particular emotions, character connections, and more, impacting how the player understands the narrative of the game overall. This research uses musical analysis of harmony and melody to show how these Leitmotifs occur throughout the game, how they manifest a musical process called ‘developing variation’, and how they play a significant role in bridging characters and environments within the game’s retro style, inducing nostalgia in the player for both their previous experiences within the game as well as with previous gaming experiences.Item Embodied Resistance(Queen's University, 2021) Pittini, JacobThis research poster examines embodiment within participatory performance events, ranging from theatre experiences to protests. This research uncovers how characteristics of embodiment such as moving, situating and sensory engagement are similarly at work in theatre as they are in protests by making abstract concepts concrete through embodiment. Using a crafted theory of temporal embodiment, the transformative power of embodied participation in such events becomes clear as participants can address the past, act through their bodies in the present and change the future.Item The Dark Side of Helping: Escalation(Queen's University, 2020) Patel, RahulIn the real world, employees may be presented with difficult tasks that could be tackled in multiple ways and with available resources. On top of this, with deadlines, few external resources, and other tasks that employees typically face, thinking tends to be narrowed and so do the actions that follow. This could lead to a persistent course of action that leads to failure. We call this situation escalation of commitment. When our coworkers offer help and we are stuck and have invested time and effort into near-impossible tasks, is it worth accepting this offer of help? Or, would we rather risk more time and resources and instead persist in solving this near impossible problem? In the latter option, the individual may experience burnout and stress. For the organization, deadlines would not be met, and objectives could not be accomplished. My research looks at these helping behaviours and whether they lead others astray in an escalation of commitment. Specifically, I predict that individuals who have invested into a failing course of action are less likely to abandon this path when they receive help from others. This is important because when employees attempt to help a coworker who is invested in an extremely difficult task, they may be doing more harm than good.Item Indigenous Land Rights & Reconciliation(2019) Kohlman Sawa, AnjaCompeting conceptions of and authority over land are at the root of most current conflicts between Indigenous peoples and the wider state. This project seeks to interrogate the relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous understandings of land, placing both sets of literature in conversation. It asks, are these views inherently incompatible, is there overlap, and what are the implications for legal and political practices around land and land claims? While there are many points of divergence, this project finds that these views also overlap in important ways.