Grant Facilitation Officers

HSS has two GFOs who work along side our Associate Dean (Research) to provide support for research proposals and funding across all HSS departments.

Matthew Milner, PhD LMS

Matthew Milner has been a Grants Facilitation Officer since 2019; he is also Adjunct Professor in the Department of History, and the Medieval and Early Modern Studies program. He holds a PhD in History from the University of Warwick (2007), and a Licentiate in Mediaeval Studies from the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies in Toronto (2012). As a researcher he has secured over $150,000 as a principal investigator, $200,000 in fellowship funding, and $1.96 million as a co-investigator.

Prior to joining Memorial he was Assistant Director of the Centre for Digital Humanities, and held various administrative, postdoctoral, and faculty contractual positions, at McGill University in Montreal (2008-16) where he also taught in the Department of History and the School of Religious Studies. He has also worked as a full-stack freelance webdeveloper, most notably as the digital humanities design consultant on Gale-CENGAGE's Digital Scholar Lab. As an historian, work focuses on two main areas: the history of sense perception & sensory cultures of late medieval and early modern England; and digital historical methodologies, centering on the use of network theories and structured data methods for modeling historical phenomena. He is the author of The Senses and the English Reformation (Ashgate, 2011), published articles and essays, and given keynote lectures in Canada, the US, UK, and Germany on sensory history and religious life in late medieval and reformation Europe. He is currently wrapping up a SSHRC Insight Development Grant focued on the prototype digital history platform nanohistory.org. For more on his scholarly work, see https://www.matthewmilner.name.

As a GFO, his specialized work, outside of proposal review and submission, focuses on continued development of HSS research infrastructure and needs, research administrative data analysis and reporting, and policy / process analysis and assessment. He has represented HSS on institutional committees and groups such as Research Data Management, and Research IT governance council. As an HSS GFO he is an ex-officio member of the Faculty's Planning and Research Commmittee.

Heather C. O'Brien, PhD (ABD)

Heather (Christine Gogacz) O'Brien started working as a Grants Facilition Officer for the HSS Dean's Office in August, 2017. Prior to this, she worked for eight years as a classroom teacher (Istanbul, Turkey; Stockholm, Sweden; and Toronto, Ontario) for all ages in grades 1-12, before teaching as a contractual instructor for the Department of English at Memorial University from 2005-2017, in addition to many research assistanships at Memorial. Heather obtained her Bachelor of Arts degree concurrently with her Bachelor of Education from Lakehead University (Ontario), her Honours Bachelor of Arts from Wilfrid Laurier University (Ontario), and her Masters of Arts from Memorial Unversity (Newfoundland). She is currently on leave from her PhD at Memorial. Details of her academic record can be found at ORCiD #0009-0003-7587-4140.

In her GFO role, Heather's primary task is in supporting proposal development, completing administrative reviews, and helping faculty members in HSS navigate the various submission procedures for internal, Canadian and international funding programs. Heather's experience in application development spans the Tri-Agencies: SSHRC, NSERC, CIHR, as well as CRC and NFRF. She has been Memorial's GFO-Liasion for 5 years and as such, sits on the VPR's Research Council. She also served for three years on the Vice-Provost Equity Diversity and Inclusion and Anti-Racism's Strategic Planning Team. As an HSS GFO, she is an ex-officio member of the Faculty's Planning and Research Commmittee. Heather's favourite task in her role as GFO is meeting with resaerchers over a cup of coffee or tea and a chocolate-snack (which are always in stock in her office). She loves drop-in, improptu chats, too! Drop by any time.

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Regular updates, including announcements, webinars, and supports for research applications and proposals are posted on @MUNHSSGrants on Twitter or on our Facebook page. Please follow us!