Photo: Martin Dee
Review details about the recently announced changes to study and work permits that apply to master’s and doctoral degree students. Read more
Arts has more than 25 academic departments, institutes, and schools as well as professional programs, more than 15 interdisciplinary programs, a gallery, a museum, theatres, concert venues, and a performing arts centre. Truly unique in its scope, the Faculty of Arts is a dynamic and thriving community of outstanding scholars – both faculty and students.
Here, our students explore cutting-edge ideas that deepen our understanding of humanity in an age of scientific and technological discovery. Whether Arts scholars work with local communities, or tackle issues such as climate change, world music, or international development, their research has a deep impact on the local and international stage.
The disciplinary and multi-disciplinary approaches in our classrooms, labs, and cultural venues inspire students to apply their knowledge both to and beyond their specialization. Using innovation and collaborative learning, our graduate students create rich pathways to knowledge and real connections to global thought leaders.
UBC Library has extensive collections, especially in Arts, and houses Canada’s greatest Asian language library. Arts graduate programs enjoy the use of state-of-the-art laboratories, the world-renowned Museum of Anthropology and the Belkin Contemporary Art Gallery (admission is free for our graduate students). World-class performance spaces include theatres, concert venues and a performing arts centre.
Since 2001, the Belkin Art Gallery has trained young curators at the graduate level in the Critical and Curatorial Studies program in the Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory. The Master of Arts program addresses the growing need for curators and critics who have theoretical knowledge and practical experience in analyzing institutions, preparing displays and communicating about contemporary art.
The MOA Centre for Cultural Research (CCR) undertakes research on world arts and cultures, and supports research activities and collaborative partnerships through a number of spaces, including research rooms for collections-based research, an Ethnology Lab, a Conservation Lab, an Oral History and Language Lab supporting audio recording and digitization, a library, an archive, and a Community Lounge for groups engaged in research activities. The CCR includes virtual services supporting collections-based research through the MOA CAT Collections Online site that provides access to the Museum’s collection of approximately 40,000 objects and 80,000 object images, and the Reciprocal Research Network (RRN) that brings together 430,000 object records and associated images from 19 institutions.
The Faculty of Arts at UBC is internationally renowned for research in the social sciences, humanities, professional schools, and creative and performing arts.
As a research-intensive faculty, Arts is a leader in the creation and advancement of knowledge and understanding. Scholars in the Faculty of Arts form cross-disciplinary partnerships, engage in knowledge exchange, and apply their research locally and globally.
Arts faculty members have won Guggenheim Fellowships, Humboldt Fellowships, and major disciplinary awards. We have had 81 faculty members elected to the Royal Society of Canada, and several others win Killam Prizes, Killam Research Fellowships, Emmy Awards, and Order of Canada awards. In addition, Arts faculty members have won countless book prizes, national disciplinary awards, and international disciplinary awards.
External funding also signifies the research success of our faculty. In the 2020-2021 fiscal year, the Faculty of Arts received $34.6 million through over 900 research projects. Of seven UBC SSHRC Partnership Grants awarded to-date, six are located in Arts, with a combined investment of $15 million over the term of the grants.
Since the 2011 introduction of the SSHRC Insight Grants and SSHRC Insight Development Grants programs, our faculty’s success rate has remained highly stable, and is consistently higher than the national success rate.
This is an incomplete sample of recent publications in chronological order by UBC faculty members with a primary appointment in the Faculty of Arts.
| Year | Citation | Program |
|---|---|---|
| 2011 | Dr. MacLean examined the representation of Canada in nineteenth-century American literature. She recovered antebellum American texts about cross-border movement between Canada and the US and showed that in these texts, the idea of Canada symbolized the fulfillment of the promise of democracy that the US had failed to achieve. | Doctor of Philosophy in English (PhD) |
| 2011 | Dr. Ferreira investigated mediations of value in the Romantic literary marketplace. She focused her study on The Keepsake literary annual and gift-book and the contributed works of five now canonical writers. This research opens interpretive possibilities for rethinking how value was understood and practiced in the era. | Doctor of Philosophy in English (PhD) |
| 2011 | Dr. Jacobs investigated verbs in the Squamish language with control meanings - like "intentionally" or "accidentally" - and demonstrated that these verbs essentially mark either the beginning or the ending of an event. He argued that control meanings are derived from inferences made about whether the beginning or ending of an event is described. | Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics (PhD) |
| 2011 | Dr. Leung explored how infants learn proper names and common nouns. She found evidence that 16- and 17-month-olds interpret novel words for people as names but interpret the same words for artifacts as nouns. The findings shed light on how infants learn the word categories of their native language. | Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology (PhD) |
| 2011 | Dr. Seekings used an "ethics of care" approach to examine global health aid. Building from the current practices of major donors, he demonstrated how a care approach creates a more responsive and engaging method of developing aid policy that has the potential to better meet the needs of target communities. | Doctor of Philosophy in Political Science (PhD) |
| 2011 | Dr. Zhang identified the functions of the smallest information units within journal article components, and examined how they can be utilized in journal reading. This research suggested that individual functional units can be organized and presented to benefit readers' information usage of journal articles. | Doctor of Philosophy in Library, Archival and Information Studies (PhD) |
| 2011 | Dr. Mukherjee analyzed the transition of credit institutions from a communal norm-based informal system to a law-based formal system. This study used archival data from early modern England and colonial India to illustrate that geographical mobility plays an important role in this process. | Doctor of Philosophy in Economics (PhD) |
| 2011 | Dr. Donkersloot studied gender disparities in the social and spatial mobility of rural youth in an Irish fishing town. Her research focuses on the gendered dimensions of rural youth experience and highlights how the gendered nature of rural space and place differentially shapes young people's attitudes towards home, education and migration. | Doctor of Philosophy in Anthropology (PhD) |
| 2011 | Dr. Sedo examined a small Northern Chinese county during the Ming period to provide a new regional alternative to the dominant 'Jiangnan Model' of Late Imperial Chinese studies. In doing so, he provides a new local vantage point to rethink the deeply regional character of the composite Ming realm. | Doctor of Philosophy in History (PhD) |
| 2011 | Dr. Reid described developing practices of grassland conservation in the Cariboo-Chilcotin, British Columbia. This research shows how different social groups -- ranchers, Aboriginal community members, and conservationists -- understand and value grasslands in different ways.The research explores emerging land use compromises and supports cooperation in conservation initiatives. | Doctor of Philosophy in Geography (PhD) |