News

Rural studies PhD candidate, Lissel Hernandez Gongora, conducted a webinar last May 8th in coordination with the Rural Policy Learning Commons. Lissel spoke about polycentric governance in climate change policies. The presentation included: 1)The theory of polycentric governance, 2) The case study implementation of REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) in Mexico as an example of the polycentric approach in climate change policies, and 3) Recommendations for decision-makers.

Erinn Lee is a Master’s student in the Rural Planning and Development program at the University of Guelph. She is also a participant in the Highly Qualified Personnel (HQP) Scholarship Program. As part of this program, she had the opportunity to participate in a professional development course focused on the agricultural industry with other graduate students from diverse research disciplines. 

Rural Planning and Development graduate students Gursewak Singh, Alexa-Rae Valente and Louis Helps recently completed a climate change project on behalf of Grey County. This work will serve as a springboard towards the development of a Grey County Climate Change Action Plan.  The project has been profiled in an article in the Owen Sound Times.

Rural economic development practices are often applied under the same instances across all rural towns as it is believed that what will work for one rural town will work for the next. However, not all rural economic development practices work in smaller rural towns. I had the opportunity to attend the 2019 Teeny Tiny Town Summit on April 11th, 2019 in Orono, Ontario. 

Jordan MacDonald, a MSc Candidate in Capacity Development and Extension (CDE) within the School of Environmental Design and Rural Development, has received a Joseph Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship - Master’s (CGS M). This scholarship is funded through the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.

Elijah Dalton, a MSc Candidate in Capacity Development and Extension (CDE) within the School of Environmental Design and Rural Development has won a prestigious 2019 Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute Research Fellowship.  The Government of India through the Ministry of Human Resource Development funds this competitive fellowship. Elijah will use this funding to support three-months of fieldwork in rural Bihar State in India.

We are proud to offer congratulations to Graeme Reed, PhD student in Rural Studies, on being awarded the prestigious Doctoral Aboriginal Graduate Scholarship. Graeme is of mixed Anishinaabe and European descent. He is a senior policy advisor at the Assembly of First Nations (AFN), where he advocates for the inclusion of First Nations in climate and energy policy. His PhD research, under the supervision of Dr. Nicolas Brunet, Dr. Sheri Longboat and Dr.

Congratulations to Sean Kelly, Associate Professor and Director of the School of Environmental Design and Rural Development who was honoured by the Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture (CELA) at the annual conference held March 6-9, 2019 in Sacramento California.  This year's CELA conference theme was "Engaged Scholarship:  Bringing together research, teaching and service".  The annual conference brings over 400 attendees from across the world to exchange their recent scholarly activities fro

Rural Canada is doing immigration differently. Although historically not sites of large-scale immigration, rural communities and regions throughout Canada continues to welcome new immigrants. This session explores how rural communities and regions are building strategies to attract, settle, welcome, and integrate new immigrants. These strategies, however, can not simply replicate urban-based strategies. This session highlights lessons learned from the perspectives of programs, policies, and research when doing immigration different in rural Canada.

On March 20, 2019, Dr.