Canadian Immigration Updates

Applicants to master’s and doctoral degrees are not affected by the recently announced cap on study permits. Review more details

The Faculty of Arts at UBC brings together the best of quantitative research, humanistic inquiry, and artistic expression to advance a better world. Graduate students in the Faculty of Arts create and disseminate knowledge in the Humanities, Social Sciences, and the Creative and Performing Arts through teaching, research, professional practice, artistic production, and performance.

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.

 

Research Facilities

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.
 

Research Highlights

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.

Graduate Degree Programs

Recent Publications

This is an incomplete sample of recent publications in chronological order by UBC faculty members with a primary appointment in the Faculty of Arts.

 

Recent Thesis Submissions

Doctoral Citations

A doctoral citation summarizes the nature of the independent research, provides a high-level overview of the study, states the significance of the work and says who will benefit from the findings in clear, non-specialized language, so that members of a lay audience will understand it.
Year Citation Program
2017 Dr. Kage analyzed horse-riding as a companion species practice and cultural technique in German literature around 1900. Her research shows the shifting relationship between humans, animals and their surroundings. It also adds to our knowledge of current developments in Ecocriticism, the study of literature and the environment. Doctor of Philosophy in Germanic Studies (PhD)
2017 Dr. Ober studied the revival of Buddhism in modern India. He traced the ways that 19th and 20th century South Asians and Europeans rewrote and reinvented the very way we understand Buddhist history and practice. Dr. Ober's research, which is of interest to historians and practitioners alike, shows Buddhism's transformation in a modern, global age. Doctor of Philosophy in Asian Studies (PhD)
2017 Through an examination of state policies and literature, Dr. O'Brien studied the ways that race shapes social organization in Canada, Singapore, and Malaysia. Though most studies of these nations focus on their distinct forms of multiculturalism, Dr. O'Brien argues that they similarly use raciality to organize populations based on human types. Doctor of Philosophy in English (PhD)
2017 Dr. Whitt studied the politics of climate change in the Andean highlands of Bolivia. He explored how daily spatial experiences, like intensified floods, mud, and lightning, shape local environmental politics. He argues for conceptualizing people's responses to climate change as ongoing negotiations with changing space. Doctor of Philosophy in Anthropology (PhD)
2017 Dr. Okawa explored how people in the past created order by overcoming conflicts, using the example of the Buddhist temple of Koyasan in Japan. He argued that the indescribable power of divine beings morphed onto their geography and was the source of order for a regional society before the advent of the early modern state at the turn of the 17th century. Doctor of Philosophy in Asian Studies (PhD)
2017 Dr. Moscrop asked 'Can we make good political decisions?' and 'How can we make better ones?' His work bridges the gap between political theory and social psychology, and helps us understand how we might change ourselves and our institutions in order to produce rational and autonomous judgments and decisions. Doctor of Philosophy in Political Science (PhD)
2017 Dr. Crosby studied 19th century Salish Passion Plays - a public form of live religious theatre. Her findings revealed that local and global news coverage of these plays indicated an overlap with religious and secular practices of First Nations and that Indigenous leaders exploited this media interest and inter-cultural exchange for political benefit. Doctor of Philosophy in Art History (PhD)
2017 Dr. Romengo examined the paratexts, work that accompanies a text, of sixteenth century French writer, Marguerite de Navarre. Her analysis brought to light not only the material and historical conditions of their publication, but also the literary and extraliterary stakes involved in the early editions of Marguerite de Navarre's works. Doctor of Philosophy in French (PhD)
2017 Dr. Afsahi looked at the willingness and capacity of people to discuss cultural and religious values and practices. She designed and tested new and promising methods of facilitation for such conversations. Her research has important implications for both theorists and practitioners interested in finding ways of talking about deeply-divisive issues. Doctor of Philosophy in Political Science (PhD)
2017 Dr. Mackie's work focused on how the pronunciation of words changes over generations. Using computer simulation, he showed that simple phonetic misperceptions can influence the total number and type of consonant sounds found in a language. This research contributes more generally to our understanding of how and why human languages change over time. Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics (PhD)

Pages