Laurier researcher Kate Rossiter honoured with Canada Prize for book focused on institutional violence

June 6, 2025

Kate Rossiter, an associate professor of Health Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University, has been awarded a 2025 Canada Prize by the Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences. Canada Prizes recognize outstanding authors whose work provokes and informs national conversations while drawing attention to the contribution of scholarship to Canadian society.

Rossiter and her co-author Jen Rinaldi, associate professor of Legal Studies at Ontario Tech University, were honoured for their book Population Control: Theorizing Institutional Violence. Based on years of research, including archival investigations and interviews with residents and survivors of emergency shelters, asylums, prisons and residential schools, Population Control sheds light on how society manages oppressed groups of people through violence.

Since 2013, Rossiter been studying the effects of institutional violence at the former Huronia Regional Centre in Orillia, Ont., Canada’s first and largest residential facility for people with intellectual disabilities. Her research stems from personal experience. Growing up with an uncle who had Down syndrome, Rossiter felt uneasy seeing him spend his life in an institution.

“Social loathing starts when we stop understanding people as human beings and start seeing them as a social issue that needs to be dealt with,” says Rossiter.

This way of thinking often results in abuse toward vulnerable individuals by the people tasked with their care, including assigning people numbers rather than names, solitary confinement, force feeding, beatings and sexual assaults. With many signs indicating that institutionalization is on the rise in North America, including proposals to expand group home living and create migrant detention centres, Rinaldi and Rossiter hope their book will heighten awareness of this predictable social phenomenon and prevent its reoccurrence.

“At a time of deep social and political change, the Canada Prizes remind us why the humanities and social sciences matter,” says Karine Morin, president and CEO of the Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences. “These winning books deepen our understanding of the world we live in, shedding light on overlooked histories, challenging assumptions and showcasing the revealing power of research in addressing the critical issues of our time.”

The Canada Prizes were presented on June 3, 2025 at the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences in Toronto. Each winner received $4,000. The awards are made possible thanks to the support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.