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 |
|---|---|---|
| 2015 | Dr. Hubregtse examined the architecture and artworks in international airports. His concept "aero-kinaesthetics" considers the air terminal's aesthetics in terms of its capacity to order and affect passenger movement. His research offers a new understanding of how air terminal design contributes to the operation of international airports. | Doctor of Philosophy in Art History (PhD) |
| 2015 | Dr. Yu studied econometric models that may have multiple equilibria. He developed an approach to detect multiplicity of equilibria directly from observed variables. His study advanced our understanding of the relationship between the equilibrium behaviour and distribution patterns of data. | Doctor of Philosophy in Economics (PhD) |
| 2015 | Dr. Wrightson's research looked at the ways in which Indigenous peoples challenge museum exhibitions that reflect a colonial perspective. She found that Indigenous communities engage museums directly by creating new pieces and representing themselves. The result of these engagements supports Indigenous decolonizing political movements. | Doctor of Philosophy in Political Science (PhD) |
| 2015 | Dr. Chen studied the performance of Chinese firms in the international market. He found that the most productive firms benefit more from the tough market competition since they can afford higher marketing costs. His research helped us to better understand the negative correlation between the productivity of Chinese firms and their export intensity. | Doctor of Philosophy in Economics (PhD) |
| 2015 | Dr. Goenaga investigated why some states are successful in providing valuable services to their populations, while others are plagued by corruption and inefficiency. He showed that the organizations that citizens adopt to interact with political authorities determine their collective capabilities to build safe and prosperous societies. | Doctor of Philosophy in Political Science (PhD) |
| 2015 | Dr. Gutiérrez investigated a series of phonological and phonetic aspects of Nivale, an endangered language of the Argentinean/Paraguayan Chaco. She focused on several phenomena that deal with the representation, distribution, and organization of sounds in Nivale, contributing major insights from both typological and theoretical perspectives. | Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics (PhD) |
| 2015 | Dr. Mann studied representations of Parisian city space in nineteenth-century British fiction, travel writing and periodicals. Her work reveals that the Parisian street generated cultural anxiety, as Victorians read Paris's artificial light, public inclusion of women and cross-class leisure as signs of France's spatial and cultural superiority. | Doctor of Philosophy in English (PhD) |
| 2015 | Dr. Duhaime-Ross evaluated public policies related to education in Canada. She found evidence that educating immigrant children in the main language spoken in their host region had a large impact on their employment outcomes at adulthood. Her research also advanced our understanding of how parents save for their children's postsecondary education. | Doctor of Philosophy in Economics (PhD) |
| 2015 | Dr. French investigated how the philosopher Rudolf Carnap understood logic as a kind of conceptual technology. The result is philosophy as conceptual engineering: scientific concepts can be designed and constructed to satisfy the pragmatic demands of scientists. His work has implications for how to view the conceptual foundations of the sciences. | Doctor of Philosophy in Philosophy (PhD) |
| 2015 | Dr. Dangeli studied the work of First Nations composers and choreographers on the Northwest Coast of British Columbia. Her research demonstrates that Indigenous protocol is integral to their process of creation and performance. The newly created songs, dances and collaborations are vital to the assertion of Aboriginal sovereignty and land rights. | Doctor of Philosophy in Art History (PhD) |