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 |
|---|---|---|
| 2017 | Dr. Pan developed a new method for measuring consumption allocations within households. He applied this method to study household behaviors in situations where members' income fluctuates. His research highlights the importance of taking bargaining between couples into the analysis of how couples insure themselves against income risks. | Doctor of Philosophy in Economics (PhD) |
| 2017 | Dr. Molnar's research areas are in family economics, education and health, with a focus on disadvantaged members of our society. Her work helps us understand parents' time allocation behavior at home, how delayed school entry fosters child development, and Medicare's impact on how much private insurers pay physicians in the US healthcare system. | Doctor of Philosophy in Economics (PhD) |
| 2017 | Dr. Ivemark compared how French Antilleans and West Africans assimilate across two generations in the Paris region. His work not only sheds light on what generates different group outcomes, it also advances our understanding of the importance of race, culture and religion in the integration experiences of different parts of France's Black population. | Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology (PhD) |
| 2017 | Dr. Ashton studied new historical texts to examine how theories of human psychology were used to design early political institutions. He demonstrated a correlation between the rise of China's first empire and the rituals that affect people's emotions. This research changes our understanding of early political and religious history. | Doctor of Philosophy in Asian Studies (PhD) |
| 2017 | Dr. Truong studied how object-person relationships, such as ownership, influence memory and attention. She demonstrated that the psychological effects of ownership on attention to objects are revealed and sometimes changed when the scope of the self is expanded to include action, motivational significance, and continuity of self-relevance over time. | Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology (PhD) |
| 2017 | Dr. Auyeung investigated the relationship between social anxiety, social exclusion, and empathy. Socially anxious individuals were more accurate at empathizing with others' negative emotions, but were less likely to engage in positive social behaviours. Her research has important implications for treatment of social anxiety. | Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology (PhD) |
| 2017 | What is meant when we promote the idea of development? Dr. Murray explored political meanings of "development" in one site of social struggle-a public hearing on building heights in Vancouver's Chinatown. She offers an activist method for unpacking the social, material and historical dynamics through which such clashing public truths are produced. | Doctor of Philosophy in Social Work (PhD) |
| 2017 | Dr. Ferguson studied principles of cognitive neuroscience to better understand how we use our bodies and minds to make sense of our surroundings during a theatre performance. He examined how artists create spatial compositions in which audience members use their physical memories and neural patterns to create meaning and new experiences. | Doctor of Philosophy in Theatre (PhD) |
| 2017 | Dr. Addison examined the avoidance of health information in people with health concerns. She showed that limiting methods, such as filtering and delegating, were particularly common in cases where people felt fear, disinterest, or distrust. Her work will contribute to our understanding of how we manage and experience health issues. | Doctor of Philosophy in Library, Archival and Information Studies (PhD) |
| 2017 | Dr. Whillans examined the relationship between time, money, and subjective well-being. Using large scale surveys and experiments, she found that choosing time over money, both in daily and major life decisions, promotes greater happiness. | Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology (PhD) |