Discovery research · Current
Equitable participation in STEMM
Unlike most research physics labs, we publish on the composition of the field itself: who is pursuing and who holds degrees in physics in Canada, and what the pattern tells us about the barriers.
Canadian Physics Counts
The first national picture
Physics in Canada has never had a reliable account of who is in it. Departments hold partial numbers, national bodies hold others, and neither describes the identities of the people actually studying and working in the field.
Canadian Physics Counts was built to fix that. Published in FACETS in 2025, it is an exploration of the diverse identities of physics students and professionals in Canada — a national survey designed to be repeatable, so that the field can eventually see change rather than infer it.
The work is done to the same standard as anything else in this lab. Survey instrument design, sampling, and analysis are the methods here, in place of optics and chemometrics, and they are held to the same review.
Why it sits in a physics lab
Because the question is about physics, and because a physics department is where the answer has to land. A study of participation carried out from outside the field is easy to set aside. One published by a physicist, in a peer-reviewed venue, with a physicist’s account of the methodology, is harder to ignore — and more useful to the departments that have to act on it.
It also connects directly to two decades of work outside the lab. The same programme that studies who enters physics also runs the outreach that changes who enters it.
CISE Atlantic
This research programme aligns with the mission of CISE Atlantic — the Community of Support for Inclusion in Science and Engineering in Atlantic Canada — and with Imhotep’s Legacy Academy, which has worked with African Nova Scotian students since 2003.
Publication from this area
E. J. Hennessey, A. Smolina, S. Hennessey, A. Tassone, A. Jay, S. Ghose and K. C. Hewitt. “Canadian Physics Counts: An Exploration of the Diverse Identities of Physics Students and Professionals in Canada.” FACETS, vol. 10, pp. 1–16, 2025.
Related outputs
Everything this programme produced
The papers, the news and the recognition that came out of this area, each filtered to it.
The refereed papers and book chapters on participation in STEMM.
Awards, scholarships and outreach tied to this programme.
Seventeen items — CBC, the Globe and Mail, the Canadian Black Scientists Network.
The instruments this work is carried out on.
Funded by
Who supports this work
The agencies, foundations and partners that fund the equitable participation in STEMM programme.
Join us
Work on this
This area suits students with training in survey methodology, statistics or science education who want that work to sit inside a physics department rather than beside one.