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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 |
|---|---|---|
| 2009 | Dr. Stolte examined Charles Dickens's engagement with psychological discourse in his first-person fictions, revealing both what was at stake in Victorian psychological debate--the possibility of immortality--and the discursive means by which a physical model of mind was able to rise to dominance in the period. | Doctor of Philosophy in English (PhD) |
| 2009 | Dr. Ju examined how government policy can affect the optimal pricing behaviours of international telephone carriers. He found that unilateral effort in this market aggravates the market efficiency, and the social optimum can best be achieved through bilateral competition. His research enriches the understanding of bilateral oligopoly markets. | Doctor of Philosophy in Economics (PhD) |
| 2009 | Dr. Foscarini investigated the design and use of function-based records classification systems in four central banks in Europe and North America. By applying methods derived from other disciplines, her research contributes rich insights into the relationship existing between recordkeeping practices and organizational cultures. Dr Foscarini's study also clarifies fundamental archival concepts like the one of function. | Doctor of Philosophy in Library, Archival and Information Studies (PhD) |
| 2009 | Economic markets are commonly imagined as disembodied and removed from daily life. Set against this view, Dr. Gould's dissertation explores the political struggles, bureaucratic machinations, and historical and contemporary violences that are the conditions of a rural Guatemalan land market. | Doctor of Philosophy in Geography (PhD) |
| 2009 | Dr Nathanson's research explored revenge. Although neurotics only fantasize, psychopaths - characterized by remorseless criminality - always get revenge. Their persistence may be explained by the immediate relief felt by the avenger. Long-term psychological well-being comes instead from deriving personal meaning from what happened. | Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology (PhD) |
| 2009 | Dr Ternes examined verbal credibility assessment in incarcerated offenders' accounts of perpetrated violence. Her research showed that verbal credibility assessment is possible with this population. These results will assist those who work with violent offenders to improve risk assessment and other evaluations. | Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology (PhD) |
| 2009 | Dr. Brown investigated the sound system of the endangered Gitxsan language of northern BC. He determined that there are many gradient pressures regulating the structure of words. This identification of new sound patterns serves as a contribution to phonological theory, and to our understanding of the Gitxsan language. | Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics (PhD) |
| 2009 | Dr Selesky examined how charity becomes a powerful tool for religious women writers to initiate reform in social and cultural values, shaping new identities for women. This study provides new insight into the condition of women and thereby into the construction of society and social reform in the nineteenth century. | Doctor of Philosophy in English (PhD) |
| 2009 | Dr. Norman investigated the rescaling of transboundary water governance along the Canada - U.S. border. This research helps to move environmental governance discussions beyond a nation-state framework, illuminates the role of local actors in international resources issues, and shows how the politics of power help define and redefine the landscape. | Doctor of Philosophy in Geography (PhD) |
| 2009 | Dr. Maurer examined how conventional ways of using language evolve in computer-mediated communication. Studying internet etiquette, online activism, and the role of local contexts, she refined rhetorical and linguistic theories and also called into question social science theories of how the internet impacts identity and social relations. | Doctor of Philosophy in English (PhD) |