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 | What is a free society? Dr. Hellewell proposes that we understand liberty, not as the absence of interference, but as security against ``arbitrary power``, the power that lacks effective mechanisms for ensuring it is accountable to our rights. This conclusion has important implications for the design of political institutions in free societies. | Doctor of Philosophy in Philosophy (PhD) |
| 2015 | Dr. Zrill completed his doctoral studies in the field of Economics. He developed a new approach to measure and recover preferences from observed economic choices made by individuals. This method can be applied in order to assess the distribution and magnitude of certain behavioural characteristics in the population, for example attitudes toward risk. | Doctor of Philosophy in Economics (PhD) |
| 2015 | Dr. Fotsing examined the concept of culture in the contemporary African novel. His analysis demonstrates that there is a mixture of local and global cultures in fictional books written by African authors. It is therefore difficult to refer to that literature as if it had one single identity. This research challenges assumptions about African writing. | Doctor of Philosophy in French (PhD) |
| 2015 | Dr. Steinmann analyzed video works by artists Melanie Gilligan and Hito Steyerl through the lens of what Michel Foucault called biopower. She argued that these works show how biopower shapes the neoliberal subject through surveillance and documentation. Her work demonstrates that this politically engaged art offers new insight into biopower. | Doctor of Philosophy in Art History (PhD) |
| 2015 | Dr. Farias studied connections between foreign policy motivations and the provision of development assistance to Brazil. The analysis shed light on issues of power, foreign policy analysis, and development assistance. The study also draws attention to South-to-South cooperation, emerging donors, and Brazilian foreign policy and biofuels diplomacy. | Doctor of Philosophy in Political Science (PhD) |
| 2015 | Dr. Dunham designed and built software to assist in the collaborative documentation and analysis of endangered indigenous languages. This aids researchers conducting fieldwork in linguistics. The online application he designed is currently used on nine under-documented languages, and promises to contribute to their study, preservation and revival. | Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics (PhD) |
| 2015 | Dr. Komarnisky studied Mexican migrants in Alaska. She found that both locations, and a shared experience of mobility between them, are what makes these people feel at home in the world. This study adds to our understanding of migration patterns and experiences of place, and can contribute to policies that improve the lives of migrants everywhere. | Doctor of Philosophy in Anthropology (PhD) |
| 2015 | Dr. Pearce completed her doctoral studies in the field of Geography. She contrasted the creative and mainstream understandings of the economy in two community economic development organizations. Following her research, she illustrated the impacts of economic ideas in alternative economic projects. | Doctor of Philosophy in Geography (PhD) |
| 2015 | Dr. DesRoches explored the concept of natural capital. Economists who embrace natural capital no longer view nature as storehouse of inert materials, but rather as a collection of active production processes that are furnished by nature for free. Nature is depicted as a garden containing objects purposefully arranged by humans to serve their own needs. | Doctor of Philosophy in Philosophy (PhD) |
| 2015 | Dr. Tomm examined how cooperative rules and agreements emerge in political conflicts within and between states. He developed an innovative theory of how the process of deliberation and argument can contribute to cooperation, by building trust between opponents. | Doctor of Philosophy in Political Science (PhD) |