UPDATE (May 29, 2018): Jay Marquis-Manicom (above) was selected as one of the final five winners at the 2018 Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences at Ryerson University in Toronto. He will represent Concordia at the SSHRC Impact Awards later this year.
Want to hear a great yarn? Look no further than Concordia’s three finalists for the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) annual Storytellers competition.
Applicants are tasked with presenting how SSHRC-funded research impacts the society we live in. Graduate students Meaghen Buckley, Eric Powell and John (Jay) Marquis-Manicom have been selected among the 25 finalists.
The catch: they only have three minutes or 300 words to get their point across.
Each finalist receives a $3,000 prize and the opportunity to compete in front of a live audience at the Storytellers Showcase during the 2018 Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences in Regina. The showcase takes place May 28 and will determine the competition’s five finalists.
Last year, Nadia Naffi, a PhD candidate in Education and Concordia public scholar, made it to the final five.
Jay Marquis-Manicom: ethnography of an alt-right organization
Jay Marquis-Manicom has always been interested in humans and culture. After his professors in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology encouraged him to combine his work with his interests in political movements, he decided to initiate an ethnography of an alt-right organization.
Under the supervision of professor Marc Lafrance, Marquis-Manicom has undertaken several months of field research in order to gather data for his master’s thesis. His main objective is to help demystify the political movement he is investigating and generate first-hand information about the organization for scholarly use.
“The advantage of ethnography over, say, a literature review, is that you generate your own data and do not have to rely on what other people are saying about themselves or others,” Marquis-Manicom explains.
During 2017, Marquis-Manicom conducted active participant observation with members of an alt-right movement and interviewed them as well.
“The rise of far-right and white nationalist politics is of concern to everyone,” he says. “It is important that we have accurate data about these phenomena in order to be able to engage with the current political climate.
For Marquis-Manicom, being named a Storyteller finalist is validation of his work and its usefulness.
“When you’re working in a specialized field and not taking a lot of classes at the graduate level, sometimes you can lose track of whether or not your work is even important,” he says.
“Getting awards and other kinds of positive coverage can really make a difference and remind you that people are paying attention.”
Jay Marquis-Manicom’s submission was text-based.