Homelessness. The interaction between Canadian and Native legal systems. Research questions or headlines from today’s newspaper?

Both, it turns out, with the announcement that two U of T students are among the recipients of the 2006 Trudeau Scholarships, prestigious doctoral awards handed out each year by the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation.

Lisa Helps, a student in the Department of History, is researching the history and evolution of homelessness in Canada and the United States. She is interested in how "vagrants" of the past, who were sent to jail for wandering the streets, became today’s homeless and hopes her research will influence public policy.

Dawnis Kennedy, a student in the Faculty of Law, began her legal studies intending to support her community, the Roseau River Anishinabe First Nation. She is now intent on understanding how Canadian and Anishinabe law can interact respectfully in a way that sustains community.

Awarded each year to as many as 15 students, the Trudeau Scholarships are worth up to $200,000 per student. The Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation seeks to enhance debate on society’s major issues and to provide citizens with a deeper experience of democracy.

– Jenny Hall