Announcing the Special Advisor to the Vice-President, Research and Innovation

Joanna Harrington has been appointed as Special Advisor to the Vice-President, Research and Innovation.

Joanna Harrington, Special Advisor to Vice President, Research and Innovation

Joanna Harrington, special advisor to the vice-president, Research and Innovation

I am delighted to announce the appointment of Joanna Harrington as a Special Advisor to the Vice-President (Research and Innovation) beginning on October 16, 2023 and concluding on June 30, 2025. As a special advisor, Joanna will be seconded 0.2 FTE to the VPRI Office.

In her role as special advisor, Joanna's responsibilities will include: i) serving as the SSHRC Leader for the University of Alberta; ii) representing the VPRI Office at the Federation of Humanities and Social Sciences annual meeting; iii) developing mechanisms to increase submissions for research support and participation in collaborative research projects for social science and humanities (SSH) researchers at all career stages; iv) advise and assist in SSH-related grant development support; v) identify barriers for SSH-related research and researchers that can be addressed by VPRI initiatives; and vi) identify key teams and researchers who align with SPRI areas of global excellence and opportunities for growth, and support the incorporation of these teams into major initiatives from the earliest stages of discussion and planning.

A lawyer by training, Joanna completed her PhD in Law at the University of Cambridge. She was recruited to the University of Alberta in 2004, after appointments at Western University and the University of Nottingham. She is a professor in the Faculty of Law and holds the Eldon Foote Chair in International Business and Law. A specialist in international law, her academic work focuses on serious transnational crime and the legal protection of human rights, with her recent work focused on corruption, foreign bribery, corporate accountability, and the use of non-trial resolutions. In 2016, she was the Fulbright Visiting Research Chair in Policy Studies at the University of Texas in Austin. From 2016-2023, she was a member of the SSHRC-funded Canadian Partnership for International Justice, which received the 2022 SSHRC Impact Award for Partnerships and a 2023 Governor General’s Innovation Award. Her past experience also includes a two-year secondment to the Government of Canada to serve as a legal adviser with the then Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (now Global Affairs Canada), and from 2018-2021, she was a member of the Canadian Human Rights Commission. Her international experience also includes consultancy work with the United Nations Development Programme. The author, co-author or co-editor of eight books, numerous journal articles and book chapters, and over 100 presentations, she has been a SSHRC-funded principal investigator or co-applicant since 2005, with her work attracting citation from scholars, courts, non-governmental advocacy organizations, UN experts, and parliamentary committees.

Joanna also serves, and will continue to serve, as the associate dean research for the College of Social Sciences and Humanities, where she leads the college research strategy for interdisciplinary research engagement and enhanced external funding. Her ability to work collaboratively across fields and disciplines, and her commitment to faculty mentoring and academic professional development, is further supported by her leadership experience as an associate dean with the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research from 2010-2015. She has participated in multiple rounds of the SSHRC Insight Grant and Insight Development Grant adjudications, including a term as chair of the Law and Criminology Committee, and has been an external reviewer for the Canada Research Chairs program, the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research, and the New Zealand Law Foundation, among others. She is a long-serving member of the Board of Directors of the Canadian Council on International Law, and a past recipient of honours for both teaching and research, including the Canadian Association of Law Teachers Prize for Academic Excellence and the Distinguished Service Award in Legal Scholarship from the Law Society of Alberta and Canadian Bar Association (Alberta Branch).

Please join me in welcoming Joanna Harrington as a Special Advisor to the Vice-President (Research and Innovation).

Aminah Robinson Fayek, PhD, PEng, FCSCE, NAC
Vice-President (Research and Innovation)