MacEwan University is pleased to announce its 2025 Chancellor's Research Chairs and Distinguished Research Award winner.
Chancellor's Research Chair recipients
Dr. Sarah Copland in the Department of English and Dr. Brian Franczak in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics are the latest MacEwan faculty members to be named Chancellor's Research Chairs. The Research Chair program, established in 2018, appoints select faculty members each year for their exceptional commitment to their own research, and to assisting fellow faculty with groundbreaking research and creative work.
"It is my privilege and pleasure to recognize Dr. Copland and Dr. Franczak," said Dr. Anthony Fields, MacEwan's chancellor. "Their widely varied fields of expertise demonstrate the depth and breadth of the research activity at MacEwan, and I congratulate them on behalf of the entire university community."
As Chancellor's Research Chairs, Dr. Copland and Dr. Franczak are granted a reduced teaching load in order to focus on research. Their terms will last two years, and this year they are sharing the esteemed position with Dr. Trevor Hamilton and Dr. Melissa Hills, who received chair positions for 2024 through 2026.
Distinguished Research Award winner
Congratulations to Dr. Aidan Forth, associate professor in the Department of Humanities, who is the recipient of MacEwan's 2025 Distinguished Research Award.
Each year, the Distinguished Research Award recognizes one faculty member who conducts exceptional scholarly work that has demonstrated significant contributions to society and the scholarly community - locally, nationally or internationally.
"Dr. Forth is such a deserving recipient of this award," said Dr. Craig Monk, provost and vice-president, Academic. "Having first established himself as a celebrated scholar at an American research institution, he resumed his program of work amongst our students, inspiring them with his passion for history.
"He remains exceptional in his efforts in disseminating his work to audiences on national and international stages through media engagements, peer-reviewed publications and scholarly presentations at academic conferences and prominent institutions."
Meet the Chancellor's Research Chairs
Dr. Brian Franczak
Associate professor, Department of Mathematics and Statistics
Dr. Franczak joined MacEwan in 2016, and during his time on campus has engaged in multiple ongoing national collaborations, including work with a Discovery Grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC). He leads an active research program with MacEwan students working on methodological projects in cluster analysis. In his own research, Dr. Franczak has a focus on developing mixtures of multivariate distributions for classifying observations in data sets that have asymmetric features.
Dr. Sarah Copland
Associate professor, Department of English
Since coming to MacEwan in 2012, Dr. Copland has explored a wide range of scholarly research, particularly in the scholarship of teaching and learning. She has created an exceptional plan for student involvement and prioritizes ongoing community engagement. Her research interests include modernism, narrative theory, narrative ethics, the novel and the short story. In 2023, she received a Distinguished Teaching Award for her unique approaches to learning and student engagement.
Meet the Distinguished Research Award winner
Dr. Aidan Forth
Associate professor, Department of Humanities
Dr. Forth's teaching and research explore European empires as venues of violence and warfare; humanitarian intervention; and the rich cross-fertilization of cultures, identities, and ideas that have shaped the modern world. His new research project examines the history of technological change. This work will be reflected in a book project titled Empire in Motion: Transport, Technology, and Global Connectivity, 1815-1914.
His prize-winning first book Barbed-Wire Imperialism: Britain's Empire of Camps, 1876-1903 reveals a global but hitherto unexplored network of refugee and concentration camps established by Britain in the late nineteenth century. Based on archival research on four different continents, Barbed-Wire Imperialism pioneered an interdisciplinary, comparative and transnational approach to trace a genealogy of the camp as an institution deeply embedded in the politics and culture of the Euro-American world. He expands the scope of this research in his most recent book Camps: A Global History, a classroom oriented volume based on a decade of teaching and student engagement.
Some of Dr. Forth's most recent awards include being the recipient of a SSHRC-SIG grant (2025-26), a Society of Mayflower Descendents Fellowship from the Newberry Library in Chicago (2025) and a Dibner Research Fellowship in the History of Science and Technology from the Huntington Library in Los Angeles (2025-26).
Dr. Forth plans to conduct research at archives in Europe during his forthcoming sabbatical, where he will be a sabbatical fellow at London's Goodenough College.
For more information, please contact archerj24@macewan.ca
