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 |
|---|---|---|
| 2018 | Dr. King's research highlighted the complex processes that control the spatial organization of surface meltwater features on the Greenland Ice Sheet. Her work improves our understanding of the processes controlling ice sheet melt in a warming world. | Doctor of Philosophy in Geography (PhD) |
| 2018 | Dr. Canen studied the organization of political institutions, including the formation of political networks, the sources and effects of polarization, and the impacts of information during campaigns. To do so, he also developed new theoretical models with improved statistical properties for these problems. Such tools may be applied in other fields. | Doctor of Philosophy in Economics (PhD) |
| 2018 | The fairytale fantasy is a hybrid literary genre that combines fairy tale and fantasy characteristics. Through an examination of two sets of case-studies from different national literatures, Dr. Dreier provided means to the understanding of the narrative apparatus and the revisionist qualities of fairytale fantasy works. | Doctor of Philosophy in Germanic Studies (PhD) |
| 2018 | Dr. Poon studied Canadian abstract painting in Toronto in the 1950s. She highlighted the artistic and practical strategies used by Toronto artists to establish themselves as the vanguard of modern painting in Canada. Her research considers the contributions made by Canadian artists towards the international world of modern art at midcentury. | Doctor of Philosophy in Art History (PhD) |
| 2018 | Dr. Almehairbi examined how the United Nations Secretariat uses their informal authority to persuade member states to award funds to specific departments. This study enables a more accurate understanding of the strategies of non-state actors within international organisations, as well as how and why international organisations expand over time. | Doctor of Philosophy in Political Science (PhD) |
| 2018 | Dr. Bedo studied cognitive neuroscience, with a focus on how children's brains develop the ability to read. His research examined how brain networks coordinate to make reading happen and how this differs in kids who struggle with reading. His research offers insights into how reading programs affect brain development and how this training can be improved. | Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology (PhD) |
| 2018 | Dr. Lockyer examined the meanings and functions of emotional talk in English and Polish digital communication and literary dialogue. Her findings provided insight into the role of evaluative affixes in conveying various emotional connotations of interjections. | Doctor of Philosophy in English (PhD) |
| 2018 | Dr. Muckart examined a series of sixteenth and seventeenth-century Church of England martyr portraits. Her study demonstrates how these prints and paintings emerged from and engaged with early modern conceptualizations of the English nation. | Doctor of Philosophy in Art History (PhD) |
| 2018 | Dr. Docot studied the effects of migration in her hometown in the Philippines. She investigated dimensions of everyday life including ritual and the family. By studying lives in labor-exporting communities, headed to migrant-recipient countries like Canada, she argues for the need to push against the deepening inequalities felt in the Global South. | Doctor of Philosophy in Anthropology (PhD) |
| 2018 | Dr. Turan asked why people obey political authorities even when obedience goes against their values or interests. By using a historical analysis, he argues that past authorities engineered the socio-political isolation of their subjects to break rebellious communities into obedient individuals. Current practices of obedience reflect this past. | Doctor of Philosophy in Political Science (PhD) |