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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 |
|---|---|---|
| 2021 | Dr. Akinbo investigates the co-occurrence of vowels in Fungwa, an endangered language spoken in Nigeria. The patterns of vowel co-occurrence are intertwined with a pattern of prefixation showing partial copying. This study suggests that the vowel co-occurrence is conditioned by word size, syllable structure and intrinsic loudness of vowels. | Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics (PhD) |
| 2021 | Dr. Pajot studied Edith Wharton's authorship through her magazine publications and their subsequent book revisions, and examined the literary strategies Wharton employed to navigate American literature in the early 20th century. These strategies allowed Wharton to cater to various audiences and to become a commercially-successful and serious author. | Doctor of Philosophy in English (PhD) |
| 2021 | Dr. Milner studied the importance of education in 19th century Britain, showing the positive effects of publicly provided schools and of child labour legislation on the economic prospects of children. His work demonstrates that targeted public intervention can improve social mobility and insure against economic shocks. | Doctor of Philosophy in Economics (PhD) |
| 2021 | Dr. Ghrear examined the curse of knowledge bias in children's estimates of what others know. She found that this bias is not specific to Western culture, but appears to be universal in humans. She found that younger children are more affected by the bias compared to older children, and identified contexts where the bias does not occur. | Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology (PhD) |
| 2021 | Dr. Zhang's research explained why the current method used in psychological research for handling missing data may distort the results regarding the fit of statistical models. She also developed two alternative methods that can correctly estimate the model fit. Her research contributes to the statistical methods used in psychological research. | Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology (PhD) |
| 2021 | Dr. Choi examined the works of modern and contemporary Korean diasporic artists and studied how they were intertwined with the dynamics of the global dispersion of Koreans. Her research accounted for the complexity of these works, and considered the issues that diasporic artists continue to address in the face of globalization and transnationalism. | Doctor of Philosophy in Art History (PhD) |
| 2021 | Dr. Rocks traced Chinese involvement in transnational anarchist networks with anarchists in Europe and the Americas. He revealed that anarchism and anarchist practice offered sympathetic Chinese means to imagine and act to build worlds beyond the pathways of nation, state, colony, empire, and Marxist-Leninist or Fascist internationalism. | Doctor of Philosophy in History (PhD) |
| 2021 | Dr. Acheson worked with the BC Centre for Disease Control to examine how climatic and land use changes affected a fungus called Cryptococcus gattii, which caused a deadly fungal outbreak on Vancouver Island in 1999. She discovered that deforestation events on the island were likely a major contributor to the outbreak. | Doctor of Philosophy in Geography (PhD) |
| 2021 | Dr. Leesing's thesis examined how high-rises were portrayed in diverse media in Germany from 1945 to 2020. Her findings showed how the high-rise changed the definition of 'home' while also becoming a tool for cultural forgetting and institutional surveillance. This work stresses the importance of architecture and media in a time of cultural shifts. | Doctor of Philosophy in Germanic Studies (PhD) |
| 2021 | Dr. Michalowski found that fluctuating emotions are linked with both concurrent and longitudinal health in older couples. Her findings illuminate everyday emotional dynamics that shape interconnected aging trajectories in spouses. | Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology (PhD) |