Congratulations to Our New Trudeau Scholar

Martine August, a PhD student in planning at the University of Toronto, is one of 15 Canadian students chosen as a 2009 Trudeau Scholar by the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation.

The foundation funds researchers who make meaningful contributions to the issues of the day. The scholars are expected to become leading national and international authorities on issues that affect our local and global societies, such as affordable housing, gambling addiction, water supply management, assistance to refugees and health worker migration.

The foundation's bursaries provide each scholar with $60,000 annually for three years, with potential for a fourth year, to subsidize tuition fees, living expenses and travel for research, networking and knowledge dissemination.

"This is an amazing opportunity in one sense because it is such a generous scholarship. But, really, it is such a tremendous honour to be able to join the Trudeau community of scholars, fellows and mentors. Winning brings a remarkable array of opportunity," said August. "I am just so honoured to be here," she said by phone from Gananoque, in the heart of the Thousand Islands, at the foundation's Summer Institute gathering, held May 18 to 22.

In addition to receiving financial support, Trudeau Scholars benefit from the expertise and knowledge of Trudeau Fellows and mentors, highly accomplished individuals in the Trudeau Foundation community who lead in both academic and non-academic settings.

August's research focuses on gentrification, affordable shelter and other implications of recent approaches to replace public housing in Toronto. "I'm critical of the core assumptions that underpin social mix promotion and poverty deconcentration policy," she said.

Her doctoral work focuses on the socially mixed approach to public housing redevelopment that has become popular in western developed nations in the past two decades and that has recently been taken up in Canada, including the redevelopment of Regent Park in Toronto. It allows for people from a mix of incomes and backgrounds to live in the same community.

August's thesis on social mix and urban planning was selected as the best master's paper by the Association of Collegiate Schools in Planning, which represents all accredited urban planning schools in North America. More recently, her work on the history of modernism in Canadian planning and architecture received the University of Toronto Faculty of Arts and Sciences Dean's Essay Prize.

Since 2002, the Trudeau Foundation has granted nearly 150 major awards to top researchers and highly accomplished individuals, in Canada and abroad.  Complete details about programs, including a list of all fellows and scholars, are available on the Trudeau Foundation website.

Martine is the department's third Trudeau Scholar, joining previous winners Kate Parizeau and Lisa Freeman.