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. Lay studied individuals' thoughts and emotions when in solitude (without social interaction) across cultures. Far from being an inherently lonely experience, she found motivation, older age, and social resources can help us thrive in solitude. Solitude is a multifaceted part of daily life, and her research reveals ways we may reap its benefits. | Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology (PhD) |
| 2018 | Dr. Kellman-McFarlane's research focused on cognitive processes associated with Hoarding Disorder. Her doctoral thesis explored the decision-making process that often causes people who hoard to see parting with possessions as distressing and unreasonable. Her work aims to inform the development of improved psychological treatments for hoarding disorder. | Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology (PhD) |
| 2018 | Dr. Johnston worked with Inuit mothers in Nunavut to examine child welfare in relation to changes families experience due to mining in the territory. Her research informs standards, legislation, policies and programs to protect Inuit children and youth in ways that respect and incorporate Inuit culture and traditional knowledge. | Doctor of Philosophy in Social Work (PhD) |
| 2018 | Dr. Wang studied how international trade affects firm performance. Using empirical analysis and theoretical modeling, she showed that an increase in import competition can lead to more innovation as firms "escape" the increased competition, and that longer and broader buyer-supplier relationships can improve the performance of importing firms. | Doctor of Philosophy in Economics (PhD) |
| 2018 | Dr. Schwartz developed methodology for inference in models with many simultaneously interacting agents, allowing us to better exploit the rich information contained in data on social networks and two-sided matching markets. The tools are applied to study how information frictions affect the decisions and job outcomes of workers in labour markets. | Doctor of Philosophy in Economics (PhD) |
| 2018 | Dr. Brown examined appeals to personal responsibility in public health campaigns. Personal responsibility is essential to public health, but its encouragement also has serious consequences, some of which this research documents. Four case studies illuminate the need for contexts supportive of personal responsibility, to ensure the health of all. | Doctor of Philosophy in English (PhD) |
| 2018 | Dr. Lushchenko has shown how medieval historical texts were used to create guides to leadership in seventeenth-century Japan. He examined the content and context of several previously unstudied commentaries that offer advice to rulers on governance and ethics. His findings clarify new aspects of pre-modern statecraft, education, and scholarship. | Doctor of Philosophy in Asian Studies (PhD) |
| 2018 | Dr. Koenig explored the process of creating a musical representation of the emotions experienced from the perspective of a child who has become lost. The various emotional stages were transformed into musical ideas, motifs, and phrases for full orchestra. The subsequent work was able to express this narrative without specific program notes. | Doctor of Musical Arts in Composition (DMA) |
| 2018 | Dr. Chen investigated how natural languages vary in expressing temporal and modal information. Through fieldwork on Atayal, an endangered Austronesian language of Taiwan she uncovered new ways in which meaning components can be combined. Her work contributes to modifying current theories and typology and provides valuable language documentation. | Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics (PhD) |
| 2018 | Dr. Hunter studied Vancouver poetry of the 1960s and 1970s, with a focus on two important magazines published in the city at that time, "Tish" and "blew ointment." This research contributes to an emerging scholarly engagement of the importance of literature from Vancouver, especially in its earlier formations. | Doctor of Philosophy in English (PhD) |