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. Nayebzadah studied the representation of Afghan-Canadian Muslim diaspora in postcolonial fiction through the practice of a/r/tography. Her work raises questions about biases, presuppositions, and world-views on Muslims. This research informs discussion around the role of authors as constructing and consolidating notions of "self" and "other". | Doctor of Philosophy in Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice (PhD) |
| 2018 | Dr. Polonijo studied how income, education, and race-ethnicity shape inequalities in human papillomavirus vaccination. Her research identifies the importance of vaccination policy, mother-daughter communication, and community-focused attitudes for both creating and preventing social inequalities in vaccination among adolescents. | Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology (PhD) |
| 2018 | Dr. Laptiev used modern econometric methods to find that improved access to foreign intermediate inputs, generated by tariff reductions, fosters domestic producers to upgrade the quality of their exports. His research contributes to a better understanding of the benefits of trade liberalization at the microeconomic level. | Doctor of Philosophy in Economics (PhD) |
| 2018 | Dr. Bala-Miller studied institutional investors as a potentially strong but neglected lever for advancing corporate compliance with human rights norms. Addressing the democratic deficits that she identifies within investor-led human rights activism, has the transformative capacity to ensure capital serves the needs of society, rather than the reverse. | Doctor of Philosophy in Political Science (PhD) |
| 2018 | Dr. Najjar provided new evidence of how firms change their operations in response to environmental policy. His work showed how these changes contribute to a cleaner economy, but may disadvantage domestic firms relative to foreign firms. These results give new insights into the environmental and economic consequences of environmental policy. | Doctor of Philosophy in Economics (PhD) |
| 2018 | Dr. Solomonian explored the relationship between culture and photography amongst the shishalh Nation, showing how photography is connected to, and shaped by, place, history, memory, as well as politics and power. This research highlights the importance of family photograph collections to communities, as an often-overlooked aspect of Indigenous visual-material culture. | Doctor of Philosophy in Anthropology (PhD) |
| 2018 | Dr. Green examined the literary features of texts produced in medieval England dealing with the reckoning of the calendar and the nature of time, which have usually been regarded as 'scientific'. His research provides evidence that these often-neglected works exerted more influence than previously recognized on medieval English literary production. | Doctor of Philosophy in English (PhD) |
| 2018 | Dr. Meier studied visual perception in children with typical and atypical development. She discovered that children don't see motion like adults do until they're 16 years old, and that people with "lazy eye" see motion similar to young children. This work has implications for improving vision in children impacted by neurodevelopmental disorders. | Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology (PhD) |
| 2018 | Dr. Lee examined the work of American photographers who arranged multiple photographs in sequence beginning in the late 1960s. He then revealed how their work influenced the practice and discourse of photography in France over subsequent decades. | Doctor of Philosophy in Art History (PhD) |
| 2018 | Why do some armed groups use child soldiers and some let them go? Dr. Plowright's research in Syria and Myanmar shows that certain armed groups will release child soldiers in order to appear more legitimate to international actors. | Doctor of Philosophy in Political Science (PhD) |