CLEAR is designed to expand and contract based on how much funding we have. We began small (in a supply closet, to be exact) and if tough times happen we can be small again. In the meantime, we have ~20 members in a beautiful space at Memorial University, and are generously supported by the following grants:
- 2017-2023: Placing Science: Implementing Feminist, Indigenous, and Decolonial Theories of Place and Land in the Laboratory. SSHRC Insight Grant. PI: Max Liboiron. Budget: $293,633. This grant supports our more experimental feminist and anticolonial methodologies and was used to found the lab in our new space.
- 2015-2020: Memorial Undergraduate Career Employment Program (MUCEP); wages for undergraduate students to work in the lab. The amount varies each semester, but students are granted wages for 40 hours/semester and this funding stream is the backbone for most of our lab membership.
- 2018-2022: Community monitoring of plastic pollution in wild food and environments in Nunatsiavut. Northern Contaminants Program (NCP), Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada. Co-Is: Max Liboiron, Liz Pijogge (Nunatsiavut Government). Amount of award: $97,859. This grant funds the creation of a community-based monitoring program in Nunatsiavut.
- 2019-2020: Democratizing marine pollution science through DIY instrumentation: Building BabyLegs. MEOPAR Fathom Fund. PI: Max Liboiron. Project Team: Jeffrey Yoo Warren (Public Laboratory for Open Technology), Bronwen Desmore (Public Laboratory for Open Technology). Amount of award: $11,563 (25% crowdfunded, 75% MEOPAR). This grant is specifically for validating BabyLegs, our open-source tool for DIY science.
- 2019-2020: State of knowledge study on plastic marine debris in Newfoundland and Labrador. Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO), Ocean Management Contribution Program. PI: Max Liboiron. Amount of award: $28,518. This funding is for creating original research and compiling a research report on the state of plastic pollution knowledge in the province.
- 2019-2022: Towards a marine management plan for Nunatsiavut: Coastal ecosystem research in support of priority concerns of Inuit. ArcticNet. Co-PIs: Tanya Brown (DFO) and Max Liboiron. Project team: David Cote (DFO), Evan Edinger (Memorial), Katleen Robert (Memorial), Aaron Fisk (University of Windsor). This large collaboration creates information in priority areas identified by the Nunatsiavut Government about Imappivut.
- 2020-2021: Movement of microplastics from land to sea in an urban waterway in St. John’s, Newfoundland. Ocean Frontier Institute Seed Grant. PI: Max Liboiron. Amount of Award: $15,793.20. This funds a pilot study focusing on urban water in our home city.
Completed funding streams:
- 2015 -2018: Monitoring Marine Plastics in Canada’s North, The Marine Environmental Observation Prediction and Response Network (MEOPAR). Amount of award: $137,600CAD. This grant allowed us to conduct many of our first plastic pollution studies on the island of Newfoundland.
- 2015 -2018: Action Research Methodologies for the Anthropocene: Knowing Ocean Plastics Through Participatory Citizen Science. SSHRC Insight Development Grant #430-2015-00413. Amount of award: $73,347CAD. This early grant enabled some of the earliest iterations of CLEAR to come together to think about the relationships between action and knowledge production.
The vast majority of our funds go to wages and stipends for lab members.
