Kaili Vesik
Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics (PhD)
Perception of vowel quantity in sung Estonian
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 Centres
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.
Schools / Departments
School
Department
Graduate Degree Programs
Research Supervisors in Faculty
or browse the list of faculty members in various academic units. You may click each unit to view faculty members appointed in that unit. View the full faculty member directory for more search and filter options.
| Name | Academic Unit(s) | Research Interests |
|---|---|---|
| Li, Hao | Vancouver School of Economics | Microeconomic theory, theory of contracts and organizations, and games and decisions |
| Li, Wei | Vancouver School of Economics | Contract theory, applied game theory, and information economics I am deeply interested in the interaction of information and incentives in various economics and political environments |
| Li, Xiaojun | Department of Political Science | international and comparative political economy with a focus on China; Does Conditionality Still Work? China |
| Lightfoot, Sheryl | Department of Political Science, School of Public Policy and Global Affairs | First Nations, international relations |
| Liu, Siyuan | Department of Theatre & Film | twentieth century Chinese theatre and Asian Canadian theatre |
| Logan, Tricia | Institute for Critical Indigenous Studies | residential school history |
| Loo, Tina | Department of History | Environmental history of Canada |
| Lopes, Dominic | Department of Philosophy | Aesthetics |
| Lowe, Matthew | Vancouver School of Economics | preference formation; social integration; political selection |
| Lynn, Hyung Gu | Department of Asian Studies | Asian history; popular culture, migration, colonialism, globalization, development |
| Lyon, Annabel | School of Creative Writing | Novels, stories and news |
| Macfarlane, Allison | School of Public Policy and Global Affairs | Research, science and technology policy; science and technology policy; energy policy, regulation; nuclear energy, nuclear waste management |
| Mackie, Gregory | Department of English Language and Literatures | Victorian Literature, drama, and book history |
| Maghbouleh, Neda | Department of Sociology | Migration, Race, and Identity; Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) communities; race; Racialization; Im/migration; identity |
| Mahtani, Minelle | Institute for Gender, Race, Sex and Social Justice | critical mixed race theory; cultural forgetting; Social justice |
| Maillard, Keith | School of Creative Writing | Fiction, poetry |
| Main, Jessica | Department of Asian Studies | Buddhism, Ethics, and Human Rights; Modern Buddhist Institutions, Law, and Governance; Buddhists and Buddhist Institutions Active in Modern Society: Social Welfare; Healthcare and Healing; Protest Movements; Rehabilitation, Incarceration and Corrections; Youth Culture, Physical Culture, and Scouting; Modern Japanese Religions and Society; Japanese True Pure Land Buddhism |
| Makris, Georgios | Department of Art History, Visual Art & Theory | Arts of Byzantium; Material culture and archaeology of monasticism; Dissemination and usage of portable objects across the eastern Mediterranean; Medieval monastic culture |
| Malakaj, Ervin | Department of Central, Eastern & Northern European Studies | Literature and literary studies; German studies; German Film Studies; German Media Studies; German Media History; Queer Theory and Queer Studies; Feminist and Queer Film Historiography; Critical Pedagogy |
| Maler, Anabel | School of Music | music and disability studies; music in Deaf culture; music perception; embodiment and gesture; post-tonal form; intersections of music theory, musicology, and ethnomusicology |
| Malhotra, Nisha | Sex and gender-based analysis; Economics of international development; Health care access, privilege or marginalization; Health and gender based violence; Women health; Global Health; Health Care Access; Maternity Care Evaluation; Gender based studies; Global trade and trade remedy measures | |
| Mallipeddi, Ramesh | Department of English Language and Literatures | Restoration and Eighteenth-Century British Literature |
| Mansoor, Jaleh | Department of Art History, Visual Art & Theory | Art history and theory; Curatorial and related studies; Visual arts and media arts; Cultural Industries; Formalism; Marxism and Critical Theory; Marxist Feminism; Modernism; Twentieth Century European Art |
| Maraj, Louis | School of Journalism, Writing, and Media | Languages and literature; Philosophy; Rhetoric; Black Studies; digital media; Cultural Studies; media studies; Critical Pedagogies; Race and Racism |
| Margolis, Eric | Department of Philosophy | Humanities and the arts; Philosophy of cognitive science; Philosophy of Mind |
Pages
Graduate Student Stories
- ‹ previous
- 13 of 21
- next ›
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
-
The Arthur of the March of Wales (ENGL - PHD)
-
Pidgin poetics : language culture in modern China (ASIA - PHD)
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 |
|---|---|---|
| 2023 | Dr. Pecanha analyzes the effects of a public policy that decreased violence in poor neighborhoods in the city of Rio de Janeiro on learning gains, formal employment and incarceration. He also discusses the impacts of localized temperature shocks on mortality. His research illuminates the role of urban policies in dealing with urban issues. | Doctor of Philosophy in Economics (PhD) |
| 2023 | Dr. Jones studied how transit-oriented development (TOD), increased redevelopment pressure on clusters of Vancouver's aging suburban rental housing. He critiqued the logic of TOD to argue against suburban gentrification and the displacement of marginalized renters. Dr. Jones found that these processes could be ameliorated by City Council leadership. | Doctor of Philosophy in Geography (PhD) |
| 2023 | Dr. Tulloch examined the way young people used Internet memes to process and communicate information in their daily lives. Her research highlights the importance of humour to their memetic storytelling and the implications it holds for digital citizenship education. Laughter,she argues, helps people negotiate the different values memes instantiate. | Doctor of Philosophy in Library, Archival and Information Studies (PhD) |
| 2023 | Dr. McDowell examined how downstream differences in river characteristics cause differences in river response to floods, including topographic changes and sediment transport rates. | Doctor of Philosophy in Geography (PhD) |
| 2023 | Dr. Collins demonstrated how the Japanese new religion Shinnyo-en is shaped by sacred stories about its founders. He found that members form emotional bonds with one another, the founders, and the organization by intertwining the founders' narratives with their own lives and with elements of Japanese Buddhist ritual, objects, spaces, and art. | Doctor of Philosophy in Asian Studies (PhD) |
| 2023 | Dr. Bergen examined landscapes and buildings in medieval and Renaissance allegories. These understudied natural and built environments present a paradigm for metaphor that is as important as personification for this literary genre, and stand at the heart of medieval and early modern thought and writing on space, time, memory, and the individual. | Doctor of Philosophy in English (PhD) |
| 2023 | Dr. Forrest researched the origins and development of a real-time urban traffic control system in Los Angeles, California. Through this case study, he sheds light on how both the material and cultural aspects of a municipal organization shape the city-wide implementation of digital infrastructures. | Doctor of Philosophy in Geography (PhD) |
| 2023 | Is there a pattern to one of humankind's greatest and apparently random natural hazards? Dr. Adams captured order and self-organisation amongst chaotic behaviour in mountain rivers. His experiments reveal that as rivers become more hazardous they also become more predictable and ordered, which provides opportunities for managing them. | Doctor of Philosophy in Geography (PhD) |
| 2023 | Dr. Sadaka wrote The Book of Ice, a musical composition for flute solo and chamber orchestra, which responds to The White Book, a novel written by the South Korean writer Han Kang. This piece blends pitch-set theoretical techniques and a spectral attitude to orchestration, and it develops original ways of combining music and text. | Doctor of Musical Arts in Composition (DMA) |
| 2023 | Dr. Klaiber studied the minor uplifting events that occur frequently in daily life. He showed how the lifespan developmental context and personality differences are linked to how many of these positive events people experience and how they respond to them. | Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology (PhD) |