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, an assistant professor in the department of political science in the Faculty of Arts & Science, has received the Talent Award from the (SSHRC).

Awarded annually among the council’s annual Impact Awards, the prize recognizes the highest achievements in SSHRC-funded research, knowledge mobilization and scholarship, as well as the highest achievements resulting from a SSHRC fellowship. In particular, the Talent Award recognizes outstanding research achievement and career potential from a SSHRC doctoral or postdoctoral fellowship or scholarship holder.

“Despite having only just received her doctorate in political science (with distinction) from Université de Montréal in 2021, Semra Sevi has already demonstrated she is an outstanding and prolific researcher with impact as a public scholar,” noted SSHRC in its award citation.

“I am committed to open science and developing research-driven responses to political inequality,” says Sevi, who was most recently a Banting postdoctoral researcher in the department of political science at Columbia University and received the award prior to joining U of T.

“SSHRC support gives my research credibility and has encouraged me to keep going.”

Sevi has earned global recognition for creating and making public datasets of all candidates for office in Canadian federal elections since 1867. This achievement was central to her doctoral dissertation, titled What Voters Want: Identifying Voter Preferences for Candidates. The datasets were first published on the Harvard University Dataverse in 2019 and have since been downloaded thousands of times. They have also formed the basis of eight of nearly 20 peer-reviewed articles that Sevi has written.