Dr. Joanna Peplak awarded SSHRC Insight Development Grant to study children's prosocial behaviour

Congratulations to assistant professor Dr. Joanna Peplak on receiving the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Insight Development Grant! The SSHRC Insight Grants support research excellence in the social sciences and humanities, enabling scholars to address complex individual and societal issues.

Read more about her winning project, "Raising Allies: Identifying Factors that Promote Receiving Society Children’s Prosocial Behaviour Toward Refugee Newcomers," below:

Global issues like war, political conflict, and climate change force millions of children and families to leave their homes and seek safety across borders. While refugee children resettling in high-income countries often receive help for their basic needs, they usually lack social and emotional support from their communities.

Peer conflict and social exclusion are major risk factors for mental health problems in these children, which highlights the urgent need to better understand how to encourage positive relationships between refugee newcomer children (who are in a vulnerable social state) and receiving society children (who are in a relatively privileged social state).

Dr. Peplak and her students in the Grow to Care Lab aim to explore whether and how children in Canada create positive environments that support the social-emotional well-being of refugee peers during resettlement. They will study how Canadian children think, feel, and behave in interactions with refugee children, and investigate how parent-child conversations can promote kindness toward newcomers.

From this research, Dr. Peplak plans to develop conversational tools for parents and caregivers to equip Canadian youth with the skills they need to support the wellbeing of vulnerable groups in society.