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. Milutin studied Japanese court tales written between the 9th and 13th centuries. She examined the representations of sexual violence in those tales and the cohesive patterns used by women to write about rape. Her research revealed that due to its fictional nature the tale genre provided the necessary safe space for addressing sexual violence. | Doctor of Philosophy in Asian Studies (PhD) |
| 2015 | Dr. Morgan examined the experiences of Indigenous women working part-time and at seasonal jobs in the fishing industry in northwest British Columbia. She showed that Indigenous women live precarious lives as a result of multiple systemic barriers, including barriers to finding more secure jobs and accessing Employment Insurance and Income Assistance. | Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology (PhD) |
| 2015 | Dr. McClellan's thesis examined the treatment of corpses in Latin epic poetry. He focused specifically on the motif of abuse in the post-Augustan epic. He shows that, encapsulated in the corpses and their treatment, the poems reveal an obsession with violence, horror and death that reflect the larger disturbed functioning of each poet's epic universe. | Doctor of Philosophy in Classics (PhD) |
| 2015 | Dr. Louie's fieldwork documents how hypothetical reasoning is expressed in the Blackfoot language. The framework she developed highlights how our predictions about the future depend on the actions that individuals may take. Her research contributes to endangered language documentation and our understanding about inferences, time and actions. | Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics (PhD) |
| 2015 | Dr. Tong studied forecast evaluation in financial markets from an investment perspective. He proposed a structural approach, which assessed the portfolio value of forecasts when there are limited historical data. His study advanced our understanding of the economic value of forecasts when there is limited previous information available. | Doctor of Philosophy in Economics (PhD) |
| 2015 | Through a dual linguistic and literary analysis, Dr. Wubbold examined a selection of contemporary Mayan poems. Her research focuses primarily on the use of polysemous terminology and poetic devices. This study reveals how complex networks of symbolic meaning are conceptualized and encoded in language and poetic expressions unique to Mayan culture. | Doctor of Philosophy in Hispanic Studies (PhD) |
| 2015 | Dr. Bjorkman studied the ecological and evolutionary impact of climate change in the Arctic tundra. She showed that Arctic plants will respond to warming temperatures through both plastic and adaptive changes, and that local environmental conditions other than temperature will also influence the direction and magnitude of these changes. | Doctor of Philosophy in Geography (PhD) |
| 2015 | Dr. Black investigated how online students search for information. She found creative strategies were used to manage information searching, evaluate the information retrieved, cope with competing priorities, and resolve difficulties. Her study sheds light on an under-investigated phenomenon and will influence online learning practice and delivery. | Doctor of Philosophy in Library, Archival and Information Studies (PhD) |
| 2015 | Dr. Yang studied the ways in which families change their work patterns after receiving cash. He showed that married women would temporarily leave their jobs right after receiving a tax refund. He concluded the lack of borrowing opportunity may play important roles in his findings, which have important implications for the design of fiscal policies. | Doctor of Philosophy in Economics (PhD) |
| 2015 | Dr. Sukava explored the development of anatomical terminology in classical Greece, and its mixed reception by non-medical authors. He offers the most complete assessment of classical Greek body terms to date, and contributes to our understanding of the dissemination of specialized medical knowledge in antiquity, from Homer to the 4th century BCE. | Doctor of Philosophy in Classics (PhD) |