Dr. Ann Dale - Faculty, Canada Research Chair, Trudeau Fellow
Ann Dale believes that Canadian communities face formidable challenges as they try to meet their needs today without compromising the future of their communities. They are looking for ways to develop sustainable communities in harmony with all aspects of civic life without undermining the environment or the economy.
To help communities find their way Dr. Dale, as the Canada Research Chair in Sustainable Community Development, is encouraging people to engage in a dialogue around the nature of ecological, social, and economic constraints that face them. She has been involved in the creation of online communities that interact with researchers from around the world on issues of specific interest. The hope is that they will get into the habit of exchanging ideas and plans online and make the most of the rich intellectual and social capital that is available through the technology of the Internet.
Dale has spent over three decades exploring the complexities of sustainable community development. She is involved in strategic public policy development and researching new governance models for sustainable development. Her book, At the Edge: Sustainable Development in the 21st Century, received the 2001 Policy Research Initiative Award for Outstanding Research Contribution to Public Policy.
Dr. Dale’s current project is an applied, trans-disciplinary research program that is bringing new concepts and tools directly to communities. Her research emphasizes the meaning of place, scale, limits, and diversity, and it questions how these elements affect the future of communities and their sustainable development. Ultimately, she believes her work will lead to the development of new tools for trans-disciplinary civic engagement (in particular, e-clustering and e-research/collaboration techniques), which in turn will be complemented by the use of rich narrative databases for the lifelong learning of communities across Canada.
Dale`s latest publication for UBC Press, A Dynamic Balance: Social Capital and Sustainable Community Development which she co-edited with her Australian colleague Jenny Onyx provides a compendium of academic research in sustainability and particularly explores the concept of social capital as an important sustainability resource.
In 2004 Ann Dale was named a research fellow by the Trudeau Foundation.
