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. Graves studied the economic interactions between consumers and firms in both established and emerging markets. His research highlights the sophisticated motivations behind features of the economy we observe every day, such as sales at a grocery store or entrepreneurs pitching new projects. | Doctor of Philosophy in Economics (PhD) |
| 2017 | Dr. Davis' study uncovers the procedures and policies governing the military's acquisition and ongoing control of vast tracts of national territory in Canada and the United States. In examining how emergency war powers and land use practices took hold and were given permanent spatial arrangements, this study provides a critical overview into origins and functions of North American defense lands. | Doctor of Philosophy in History (PhD) |
| 2017 | Dr. Huebel examined the identity of Jewish men in Nazi Germany through the lens of gender. His findings show how the Nazis tried to emasculate Jewish men by ways of propaganda, law and violence and how Jewish men's self-understanding of their own identity changed. This work helps us better understand the consequences of gender roles and discrimination. | Doctor of Philosophy in History (PhD) |
| 2017 | Dr. Hochbaum explored the extent to which child characteristics determine parental disciplinary behaviours. She showed that mothers respond to increasingly socially competent children by rewarding them more and punishing them less. The findings of her study strongly suggest that child characteristics contribute significantly to parenting behaviour. | Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology (PhD) |
| 2017 | Dr. Fergusson researched the cognitive mechanisms involved in the timing of everyday activities, such as steeping a cup of tea or cooking an egg. These intervals had previously received very little attention in the timing literature. Her research demonstrates that these intervals appear to be reconstructed based on our memory for the events that have occurred. | Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology (PhD) |
| 2017 | Dr. Steckler examined how people make moral judgments - that is, how they decide whether something is right or wrong. He found evidence that moral judgments are in part generated by intuitive processes and may not depend on linguistic reasoning. | Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology (PhD) |
| 2017 | Dr. Chartrand studied how riverbed shapes form along mountain streams. Using experiments, he found that their formation is determined by how channel width and velocity change moving downstream, which he captured with a mathematical model. This knowledge will aid in the design of river restoration projects that seek to improve conditions for salmon. | Doctor of Philosophy in Geography (PhD) |
| 2017 | Dr. Kolpashnikova studied the gendered division of housework in Canada, paying special attention to changes over time and to the factors explaining women's and men's differential participation in routine and non-routine housework tasks. This research reveals patterns and processes that could propel societal changes toward greater gender equality. | Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology (PhD) |
| 2017 | Dr. Fessenden looked at food-waste and hunger through the lens of an activist group, Food Not Bombs. She introduced the concepts of direct action project and social movement (dis)organization to understand this anarchist-inspired group and its potential to address hunger and poverty in empowering ways. | Doctor of Philosophy in Anthropology (PhD) |
| 2017 | Dr. Thoma studied Bavarian German discourse particles, words that give a wider epistemic context and are used to establish common ground between speaker and addressee. She argued that abstract representations of speaker and addressee knowledge are an integral part of our grammatical competence. | Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics (PhD) |