Photo: Martin Dee
Review details about the recently announced changes to study and work permits that apply to master’s and doctoral degree students. Read more
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 |
|---|---|---|
| 2014 | Dr. Stafford's dissertation examined gender norms and sexuality in Kindergarten. Her research findings illustrate how primary schools normalize gender conforming heterosexuality at the expensive of queer and transgender people. Her work is useful to anyone concerned with safer schools or interested in gender issues in dominant culture. | Doctor of Philosophy in Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice (PhD) |
| 2014 | Dr. Green explored the secular and ceremonial life of the Nuu-chah-nulth First Nation in the Alberni Valley on Vancouver Island. She found that claims to territory were articulated through material and expressive culture. She also produced a series of ethnographic films about her research in collaboration with Nuu-chah-nulth people. | Doctor of Philosophy in Anthropology (PhD) |
| 2014 | Dr. Bliss investigated the syntax of Blackfoot, an Algonquian language spoken in Southern Alberta. She developed a classification of the phrases, words and morphemes that comprise sentences and noun phrases. In addition to its theoretical contribution, Dr. Bliss's dissertation contributes to the documentation of this endangered First Nations language. | Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics (PhD) |
| 2014 | Dr. Hall studied representations of gay men in Japanese novels and films from the 1980s to the 2000s. He showed that the concerns and desires of gay men in Japan are articulated and transnational gay culture and identity are reflected. He demonstrated that supportive, political messages can be found, even in texts with problematic representations. | Doctor of Philosophy in Asian Studies (PhD) |
| 2014 | Dr. Force assessed a group of recordkeeping standards in relation to the admissibility of evidence in Canadian courts. He discovered inadequacies among these standards with regard to the legal obligations of organizations to create and manage their records. His research presents a model for using standards for compliant recordkeeping. | Doctor of Philosophy in Library, Archival and Information Studies (PhD) |
| 2014 | Dr. McKechnie's dissertation examines multiple scales of Indigenous history on the Northwest Coast, with a focus on two key domains of human existence: food and settlement. His research demonstrates an enduring coherence in Indigenous oral history and resource use. This offers insight into broader patterns of everyday human history over millennia. | Doctor of Philosophy in Anthropology (PhD) |
| 2014 | Dr. Whitehead has shown that modern Balkan instability resulted from the Great Eastern Crisis in the late 19th century. Using an international perspective, Dr. Whitehead found that the principle of national self-determination was imposed on the region without regard for local populations, which tragically underlay the origins of the First World War. | Doctor of Philosophy in History (PhD) |
| 2014 | Dr. Meyer analysed how Italian, Austrian and Hungarian history museums exhibit the Holocaust. She shows that, after the 1990s, worldwide and national trends to address the Holocaust merged texts, objects, visual materials and sounds. This offers new insights for scholars and museum practitioners working on Holocaust and other historical exhibits. | Doctor of Philosophy in History (PhD) |
| 2014 | Dr. Collard followed the exotic pet trade through six countries in Central and North America and Europe. She found high degrees of animal mortality and suffering plague the trade. She argues the exotic pet trade reproduces a hierarchy between humans and animals that impedes gentler ways of living and dying among diverse species. | Doctor of Philosophy in Geography (PhD) |
| 2014 | Dr. Malone conducted research with Upper Skagit Indian Tribe, a Native American fishing community. She explored how community members conceptualize their history and relate to the water and the land. Her research contributes to Coast Salish ethnography and helps native communities assert their Aboriginal rights and title. | Doctor of Philosophy in Anthropology (PhD) |