Ethics in Research: How to Apply for Ethics Certification

To obtain the informed consent of our research participants is both an ethical and institutional obligation for oral historians working at Canadian universities. This workshop seeks to demystify the process of applying for ethics certification.

Three emerging scholars will reflect on their experiences in navigating this process and discuss how they have translated the ethos of “sharing authority” into the formal language of their ethics applications. Meanwhile, Lead Co-Director Barbara Lorenzkowski will provide hands-on guidance on how to prepare an ethics application for your own thesis research at Concordia. Registered participants will be provided with examples of successful ethics applications, including consent forms.

About the speakers

Liam Devitt is a labour historian, writer, and research worker based in Tiohti:áke/Montréal. Their MA thesis “Gay Steel Mill” (Concordia University, 2024) examined how deindustrialization affected queer communities in Cape Breton. Currently, they are the associate director of “Deindustrialization and the Politics of Our Time” (deindustrialization.org), a SSHRC Partnership grant project examining histories and contemporary lived experiences of deindustrialization. They are also vice-president, Sir George Williams Campus for their union, CARE (PSAC 12501). They are in charge of grievances at this campus, and work with union members to fight for justice in the workplace.

Gabryelle Iaconetti (she/they) is a second-year PhD student at Concordia University in Montréal, Québec under the supervision of Dr. Rachel Berger. She holds a BA and MA in History from Concordia University and a MISt (Master of Information Studies) from McGill University. Her research interests lie at the intersection of bisexual history, oral history, queer space, queer theory and archives.

Barbara Lorenzkowski is an oral historian of childhood and youth whose work explores the ways in which global processes of migration, displacement, and violence have shaped small people’s lives in outsized ways. She recently published the co-edited anthology Small Stories of War: Children, Youth, and Conflict in Canada and Beyond (with Kristine Alexander and Andrew Burt, McGill-Queen’s University Press 2023) and is currently completing a FQRSC-funded book project The Children’s War, a large-scale oral history project on children’s sensuous and emotional life-worlds in Atlantic Canada during the Second World War. Dr. Lorenzkowski is the lead co-director of COHDS, while also serving as the associate chair at the Department of History (Concordia University).

Sonya Di Sclafani is a first-year MA student in History at Concordia University. Her research centres on women’s experiences in the Hungarian-Canadian diaspora in Montreal, with a focus on foodways and intergenerational storytelling. She holds a BA History (Honours), with a minor in English Literature, from Concordia University; a BFA in Photography and Art History (Concordia); and a diploma in Interior Design at Dawson College, Montreal.