10,000 scholars to visit UBC in the largest conference of its kind in North America

Vancouver, BC – Final preparations are underway as the University of British Columbia gets ready to welcome 10,000 delegates to the May 31-June 8 Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences, the largest multi-disciplinary gathering of scholars in North America.

Organized annually by the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, Congress brings together the world’s new and established academics and researchers.

“Congress is an intellectual festival,” said Noreen Golfman, the Federation’s President. “This is the place where the very best minds come to share their groundbreaking ideas and debate the most important social, political and cultural questions of the day.”

“We're delighted to host Congress 2008 as the major academic event of UBC’s centenary celebrations," said UBC President Stephen Toope. “A conference of this magnitude and national significance will greatly contribute to the social, cultural and educational endeavors of UBC, Vancouver and the province.”

An extensive program of lectures, research presentations, workshops and panels are planned. Internationally renowned speakers include:

• Richard Florida, academic, author, social innovator, on Who’s Your City"

• Margaret Somerville, ethicist and author, on A Bird on an Ethics Wire.

Four thousand research papers will be presented in more than one thousand sessions on a wide-ranging series of topics, including:

• Constructing Canadian foreign policy in Afghanistan

• Politics, war and embedded journalism

• The legacy of Brian Mulroney

• The ethics of the Canadian seal hunt

• The role of government in the oil sands boom

• The political, social and cultural dimensions of climate change

• Remaking aboriginal communities and the legacy of residential schools

• Rethinking the ethics of human security

• West Nile virus as a public health issue

• Policies for Canadian prosperity

• Mayerthorpe, marijuana and the media

• A cultural history of the emoticon

• Ethnicity and aging

• The risks of being rural

• The decline of happiness in liberal democracies

• Transracial adoption and the politics of identity

• The commodification of children’s culture

Certain sessions and events will be open to the general public, with a $15 Community Participant Day Pass. A complete list of open events is available at www.fedcan.ca/congress2008 in the Community Participants’ Guide. People are encouraged to check ticket availability in advance at www.fedcan.ca/congress2008.

Open events include:

• Stevie Cameron, journalist, on The Pickton File and the Missing Women of Downtown Vancouver’s Eastside.

• Richard Pound, former Olympic medalist and Chancellor of McGill, on Big Ideas in a Small World.

• Stephen Toope, UBC President, on Crossing Borders, Contesting Values: Do Universities Matter" This will be followed by a panel discussion including Chad Gaffield, President of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.

• André Pratte, Editor-in-Chief of La Presse, on Heureux penser d’où nous venons pour repenser où nous allons.

• David Chariandy, author and academic, on Cultural Memory and Forgetting: A Reading of Soucouyant.

• The Book Fair – with over 200 publishers exhibiting.

The Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences is a non-profit organization that promotes research, scholarship and teaching in the humanities and social sciences. The Federation gratefully acknowledges the financial support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, which is celebrating its 30th anniversary with a full program of events at Congress, the details of which are available at http://www.sshrc.ca/30years/celebrate/congress.asp