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The Faculty of Arts at UBC brings together the best of quantitative research, humanistic inquiry, and artistic expression to advance a better world. Graduate students in the Faculty of Arts create and disseminate knowledge in the Humanities, Social Sciences, and the Creative and Performing Arts through teaching, research, professional practice, artistic production, and performance.
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.
Research Centres
Research Facilities
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.
Research Highlights
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.
Schools / Departments
School
Department
Graduate Degree Programs
Recent Publications
This is an incomplete sample of recent publications in chronological order by UBC faculty members with a primary appointment in the Faculty of Arts.
Recent Thesis Submissions
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The Arthur of the March of Wales (ENGL - PHD)
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Pidgin poetics : language culture in modern China (ASIA - PHD)
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Statues in early modern English drama (ENGL - MA)
Doctoral Citations
A doctoral citation summarizes the nature of the independent research, provides a high-level overview of the study, states the significance of the work and says who will benefit from the findings in clear, non-specialized language, so that members of a lay audience will understand it.
| Year | Citation | Program |
|---|---|---|
| 2008 | Dr Orchard examined the origins and evolution of international mechanisms to manage refugees. By tracing state policies back to the 17th century, he demonstrated the critical role played by legal and social norms in defining how states pursued refugee protection at the domestic level as well as through international cooperation. | Doctor of Philosophy in Political Science (PhD) |
| 2008 | Dr Houglum examined the impact of early radio broadcasting on American poetry. She demonstrates how poets developed models of listening and speaking in relation to the first mass medium, and how these models expose the possibilities and limits of mass sound communication for personal, political, and public discourse. | Doctor of Philosophy in English (PhD) |
| 2008 | Dr. Willmore studied the use of targeted advertising by firms and the government. He found that it is possible for a firm to benefit from a rival's advertising, and that there is room for cooperation between private firms and the government on certain advertising campaigns. | Doctor of Philosophy in Economics (PhD) |
| 2008 | Dr. MacDonald investigated the current trend of neoliberal multiculturalism and the implications of its practice by current governments in Canada. This research assists us in understanding the shifting political terrain that contemporary social movements must navigate in order to pursue more just relations with the the state. | Doctor of Philosophy in Political Science (PhD) |
| 2008 | Dr. Bourbeau investigated how the movement of people is framed as a security concern in Canada and France. He develops a new analytical framework for the study of the securitization of international migration in which discursive power, agents, and domestic audiences play paramount roles. | Doctor of Philosophy in Political Science (PhD) |
| 2008 | Dr. Birmingham tested the long-held assumption that humans have a preferential bias to attend to the eyes of other people. Her dissertation fills in a substantial gap in the social attention literature, and brings to light important theoretical and methodological issues in social attention research. | Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology (PhD) |
| 2008 | Dr. Dorfan studied the interplay of thoughts and emotions in relation to contaminants. Her study showed that what people think of a contaminating stimulus predicts their subsequent emotional and behavioural responses to it. Her research has direct implications for improving psychological treatment of obsessive-compulsive disorder. | Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology (PhD) |
| 2008 | Dr Watkins traced the histories of scientific and technical knowledge that made possible the production of artificial cold and documented the domestication of the refrigerator. She showed how the ability to prolong the life of perishables reshaped shopping and eating practices but also reconfigured relationships between time, space and distance. | Doctor of Philosophy in Geography (PhD) |
| 2008 | Dr. Koch examined how speech melody is used to highlight important information in Thompson River Salish. This endangered First Nations language is spoken in the BC interior. Findings are based on a significant new body of valuable language recordings. The results challenge cognitive models of the link between information status and speech melody. | Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics (PhD) |
| 2008 | Dr. Cuttler established a link between checking compulsions and prospective memory, which is the ability to remember to perform activities in the future. Her research indicates that a deficit in prospective memory contributes to the compulsion to check. Her findings have implications for the conceptualization and treatment of checking compulsions. | Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology (PhD) |