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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
Research Supervisors in Faculty
or browse the list of faculty members in various academic units. You may click each unit to view faculty members appointed in that unit. View the full faculty member directory for more search and filter options.
| Name | Academic Unit(s) | Research Interests |
|---|---|---|
| Maraj, Louis | School of Journalism, Writing, and Media | Languages and literature; Philosophy; Rhetoric; Black Studies; digital media; Cultural Studies; media studies; Critical Pedagogies; Race and Racism |
| Margolis, Eric | Department of Philosophy | Humanities and the arts; Philosophy of cognitive science; Philosophy of Mind |
| Margulis, Matias | School of Public Policy and Global Affairs | International Organization; Globalization; Human Rights and Liberties, Collective Rights; Global Governance; International Political Economy; United Nations; World Trade Organization; Food and Agriculture; Human Rights |
| Marmer, Vadim | Vancouver School of Economics | Econometrics, fuzzy regression discontinuity designs, international business cycle models |
| Marshall, Toph | Department of Ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern Studies | Cinema studies; Classical Greek and Ancient Rome history; Classical archaeology; Classical linguistics; Film, television and digital media; Religion and religious studies; Literary or Artistic Works Analysis; Performance and Theatrical Productions |
| Marshall, Hallie | Department of Theatre & Film | Performing arts; Ancient Greek Theatre; Arts and Cultural Traditions; Classics; Contemporary British Theatre; Cultural Industries; History of the Book; Literary or Artistic Work Dissemination or Reception Contexts; Performance and Theatrical Productions; Poetry; Reception Studies; Religion, Culture and Space; Theatre; Tony Harrison |
| Martindale, Andrew | Department of Anthropology | Social sciences; Indigenous Archaeology; Northwest Coast; Oral Traditions; Spatial Analyses; Archaeology and the Law; Political economy; Radiocarbon Dating; Indian Residential Schools |
| Marzano-Lesnevich, Alex | School of Creative Writing | Nonfiction |
| Mathijs, Ernest | Department of Theatre & Film | film, alternative cinema, independent cinema, European cinema, horror film, David Cronenberg, film audiences, film festivals, censorship, fantasy film, Lord of the Rings, Film studies |
| Matthewson, Lisa | Department of Linguistics | Linguistics; Semantics; Austronesian languages; Cross-linguistic variation and universals; Salish languages; Semantic fieldwork; Tsimshianic languages |
| Mawani, Renisa | Department of Sociology | Sociology; Colonial Legal History; critical theory; Oceans and Maritime Worlds; Philosophy, History and Comparative Studies; Race and Racism; Time and Temporality |
| McCarty, Matthew | Department of Ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern Studies | archaeology and art of the Roman Empire and Iron Age Europe/North Africa; ancient religion and ritual practice; interplays between texts, practices, and objects; imperialism, colonialism, and identity in the ancient world; interdisciplinary, cross-cultural, comparative (especially comparison with Qin/Han China), and theoretical approaches; historiography of archaeology |
| McCasland, Jamie | Vancouver School of Economics | small firm hiring, job training, and network-based technology adoption in low-income countries |
| McConnell, Kathryn | Department of Sociology | social dynamics of climate change; intersection of climate hazards, the built environment, and population mobility |
| McCormick, Kelly | Department of History | Asian history; Visual theory, visual culture and visual literacy; Modern Japan; History of Visual and Material Culture/Photography; History of Technology; History of Gender and Sexuality |
| McElduff, Siobhan | Department of Ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern Studies | Ancient and modern translation, history of the book |
| McGee, Alexis | School of Journalism, Writing, and Media | Languages and literature; Black Feminist Theory; African American language, literacies, and rhetorics; Rhetorical theory and composition pedagogy; Rhetorical History; Composition History; Sociolinguistics; Sound (voice) |
| McGowan, Sharon | School of Creative Writing | Planning of film productions from concept to completion |
| McNeilly, Kevin | Department of English Language and Literatures | Literary theory, music history |
| Medved, Maureen | School of Creative Writing | Fiction, writing for screen |
| Menkis, Richard | Department of History | Canadian history; Historical memory; Jewish history; Holocaust studies |
| Menzies, Charles | Department of Anthropology | Social sciences; Indigenous studies; Natural Resource Management; Maritime Anthropology; Western Europe; Ethnographic Film |
| Metzer, David | School of Music | Popular Music, Classical Music, Popular Culture, Musicology, Jazz Studies |
| Meyers, Eric | School of Information | youth online behavior, information seeking, web search, libraries, public libraries, school libraries, academic libraries, learning, virtual worlds, collaboration, social networks, new media, digital literacy, information literacy |
| Mikami, Amori | Department of Psychology | peer relationships; friendships; peer rejection; bullying; social skills training; social networking; Facebook; attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder; ADHD; children; adolescents, Ways in which a supportive classroom or home environment can help children to make friends, Designing and evaluating interventions that train teachers or parents in strategies to assist children with peer problems |
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Graduate Student Stories
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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 |
|---|---|---|
| 2023 | Dr. Wadden examined the bioethical implications of using artificial intelligence and machine learning in healthcare decision-making, specifically focusing on advanced diagnostic systems. He demonstrated how these systems entail new obligations for clinicians toward their patients and how they may impact a patient's ability to consent to treatment. | Doctor of Philosophy in Philosophy (PhD) |
| 2023 | Dr. Glass studied stories of human encounters with the divine in ancient Jewish, Christian, and pagan literature, often called epiphanies. This comparative research illustrated shared beliefs in how and why the gods intervened in human life, and contributes to our understanding of intercultural relations in the ancient Mediterranean. | Doctor of Philosophy in Religious Studies (PhD) |
| 2023 | American Indians have the highest rates of early school leaving but are often left out of data. Working with the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community, Dr. Keegahn examines this omission through Indigenous education and data sovereignty. Her research reveals the ongoing erasure of American Indians and ways the Swinomish have sought to address this. | Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology (PhD) |
| 2023 | Dr. Stensrud studied the function of hypocrisy accusations in the U.S. slavery debates, tracing this rhetoric's influence on nineteenth-century writers. He demonstrates that authors incorporated anti-slavery invective in their work to translate political economic analysis into a moral vocabulary capable of mobilizing the public against slavery. | Doctor of Philosophy in English (PhD) |
| 2023 | Dr. Mackenzie's dissertation discusses some of the earliest visualizations of plants seen through a microscope. She explored the relationship between images and knowledge-making in the seventeenth century, at a moment where new ways of seeing were emerging in response to novel approaches for understanding and documenting the natural world. | Doctor of Philosophy in Art History (PhD) |
| 2023 | Dr. Lacy Boersma examined how the language of Shakespeare and his contemporaries, especially the words used to articulate doctrines of the Church of England, contributed to England's modern identity. She shows that it is not only ideas which define a nation. Terminology, the origins and associations of terms used to express those ideas, also matter. | Doctor of Philosophy in English (PhD) |
| 2023 | Dr. Minniti investigated the distribution and use of Egyptian and Egyptian-inspired objects, also known as Aegyptiaca, in Sicily during the Archaic Period (ca. 776-480 BCE). Her analysis provides a better understanding of how the objects were adopted into local customs, and the reasons why their owners chose to use them. | Doctor of Philosophy in Classics (PhD) |
| 2022 | Dr. Sandhra studied museums as spaces of belonging through the experience of three Asian Canadian migrant communities in BC - Sikhs, Chinese and Japanese. Her research and findings centred racialized voices only as a means to demonstrate the power of margins as the site of solidarity and belonging in public history discourse. | Doctor of Philosophy in History (PhD) |
| 2022 | Dr. Zhang studied the interactions between occupational persistence and labor market efficiency. He demonstrated the relationship between intergenerational persistence and occupation-talent misallocation in the labor market. His research highlights the role of information friction in workers' occupational choices and lifetime earnings. | Doctor of Philosophy in Economics (PhD) |
| 2022 | Dr. Sharpe studied how American maximalist novels published after 2001 comment on our contemporary information-saturated moment. Acknowledging that technology is causing neurological changes, these authors call for a new form of reading that embraces the inconvenience and difficulty of the maximalist novel as a way of restoring reader autonomy. | Doctor of Philosophy in English (PhD) |