Photo: Martin Dee
Applicants to master’s and doctoral degrees are not affected by the recently announced cap on study permits. Review more details
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 |
|---|---|---|
| 2019 | Dr. Gonzalez examined the development of race attitudes and gender stereotypes. She found that biases can affect children's behaviour as early as preschool but negative bias can be reduced through counter-stereotypical examples. Her research presents a strong case for developing bias interventions as early as possible. | Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology (PhD) |
| 2019 | Dr. Pan's research focused on the management of electronic records as evidence and information in Chinese enterprises in the cloud context. She found that, while there are issues with the methods used for evidence protection and verification, efforts to exploit the informational content of records for business needs are increasing. | Doctor of Philosophy in Library, Archival and Information Studies (PhD) |
| 2019 | Dr. Hockley examined performer agency in complexism, a contemporary musical aesthetic. Although complexism is often suggested as leaving the performer no room for interpretation or expression, he developed a new analytical perspective that examines how complexism's distinctive material and conceptual elements engage unique forms of performer agency. | Doctor of Musical Arts in Orchestral Instrument (DMA) |
| 2018 | Dr. Pulido Pescador studied different implications of resource misallocation across heterogeneous agents. His research helps to understand how frictions in the factor markets can shape the patterns of specialization of an open economy and the gaps in income between agriculture and non-agriculture workers in developing countries. | Doctor of Philosophy in Economics (PhD) |
| 2018 | Dr. Black studied how children and adults detect linguistic patterns in streams of sound. She found that both pre-existing knowledge and factors related to cognitive development, such as executive function, impact this learning process in different ways. This work contributes to our understanding of low-level mechanisms driving language acquisition. | Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics (PhD) |
| 2018 | Dr. Boyle examined the role of repetition in a selection of postmodern compositions, proposing new theoretical principles for understanding the perception of musical segments. Her work expands on previous discussions of musical form by explaining not only the emergence of closed segments, but also of more open forms and processes. | Doctor of Philosophy in Music, Emphasis Musicology (PhD) |
| 2018 | Dr. Wiens examined how psychologists can assess management-level job candidates for problematic personality traits and help organizations predict job performance. He also showed how such problematic traits can hinder manager's workplace relationships and disrupt their leadership effectiveness. | Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology (PhD) |
| 2018 | Dr. Buckels' research explored the psychology of subclinical, everyday sadism. She developed a self-report questionnaire that predicts cruel behaviours such as online trolling, deficits in interpersonal accuracy, and callous judgments about harm and suffering. This research challenges assumptions that sadism is always sexual or criminal in nature. | Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology (PhD) |
| 2018 | Dr. Keats-Osborn examined the collaborative work involved in generating works of literary journalism. He clarified how reporters and editors develop conventional procedures by anticipating how their work will be received. His research illustrates important links between the production and consumption of culture. | Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology (PhD) |
| 2018 | Dr. Chang examined the role of culture in human sexuality. Her research highlighted sexual diversity of minority groups previously assumed to be homogeneous. Findings revealed that mechanisms protecting relationships from infidelity differ between individualistic and collectivist cultures, and demonstrated that unconscious attitudes predict sexual behavior. | Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology (PhD) |