Michael Fabris (Krebs)
Doctor of Philosophy in Geography (PhD)
Assimilation, Place, and Indigenous Identity in the Era of Reconciliation
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Simchen, Ori | Department of Philosophy | Philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, philosophy of law |
| Sin, Nancy | Department of Psychology | Psychology and cognitive sciences; stress; Well-being; Adult development and aging; Social Aspects of Aging; Positive Emotions; Sleep; Health Promotion; social determinants of health; Health behaviours; Lifestyle Determinants and Health |
| Sinnamon, Luanne Silvia | School of Information | Archival, repository and related studies; Library science and information studies; human information interaction; Information Systems; information retrieval; New Technology and Social Impacts |
| Siu, Henry | Vancouver School of Economics | business cycle, recession, unemployment, Business cycles and the consequences of macroeconomic forces on the labour market |
| Slingerland, Edward | Department of Philosophy | Asian Studies, Chinese philosophy, philosophy, religion, religion and conflict, secularism, spontaneity, ethics, science-humanities integration, interdisciplinarity, interdisciplinary research, Chinese thought, religious studies (comparative religion, cognitive science and evolution of religion), cognitive linguistics (blending and conceptual metaphor theory), ethics (virtue ethics, moral psychology), evolutionary psychology, the relationship between the humanities and the natural sciences, and the classical Chinese language |
| Smilges, Logan | Department of English Language and Literatures | |
| Smith, Tai | Department of Art History, Visual Art & Theory | History of art and architecture; Art theory and analysis; Visual theory, visual culture and visual literacy; Arts and Technologies; Economical Contexts; Gender; media theory; Modern and Contemporary Art and Design; Politics of Media and Mediation; Textiles |
| Snowberg, Erik | Vancouver School of Economics | Political economy; Behavioural Economics; Experimental Design; Data-Intensive Methods in Economics |
| Snyder, Jason | Department of Psychology | plasticity, learning, memory, stress, mental health, emotional behaviour |
| Solimine, Philip | Industry economics and industrial organization; Econometrics; Data-driven estimation, optimization, and control; Collaborative and social computing; Experimental economics | |
| Soma, Kiran | Department of Psychology | Neurosciences, biological and chemical aspects; Neurosciences, medical and physiological and health aspects; Psychology and cognitive sciences; Zoology; Behavior; Biological Behavior; Endocrinology; Neuroendocrine Diseases; Neuronal Communication and Neurotransmission; Neuronal Systems; neuroscience; stress |
| Song, Kyungchul | Vancouver School of Economics | Estimation of structural models based on interactions among economic agents |
| Soskuthy, Marton | Department of Linguistics | language change; Computational modeling; Statistics; Phonetics; Cognitive systems |
| Speller, Camilla | Department of Anthropology | Anthropology; Archeological Data Analysis; Molecular Genetics; Ancient DNA Analysis (paleogenetics); Ancient proteins (paleoproteomics); Animal Domestication; Bioarchaeology; Environmental Archaeology; Marine Ecosystems |
| Squires, Munir | Vancouver School of Economics | Development Economics, Firms and Productivity |
| Sriram, Veena | School of Public Policy and Global Affairs, School of Population and Public Health | Social sciences; Global health policy; Politics of policy processes; South Asian Studies; Governance; Health workers; power |
| Stainton, Timothy | School of Social Work | Developmental Disability, Disability, Social Policy, History of Developmental Disability, Philosophy of Welfare |
| Starling, Dan | Department of Art History, Visual Art & Theory | |
| Stecklov, Guy | Department of Sociology | Family and household demographic studies; Fertility; Migration; Mortality; Demography; Studies of Canadian society; Demographic behavior; Historical social change; Demographic Change in Sub-Saharan Africa; Migration and assimilation; Population and Development; Research and survey methodology |
| Stephens, Christopher | Department of Philosophy | Philosophy; philosophy of biology; philosophy of science; rationality; scientific philosophy; Why be rational? |
| Stickles, Elise | Department of English Language and Literatures | English language; Mental Representation; grammar; Pragmatics; Semantics; Syntax; Imagery; Symbolism; Gestural, Verbal Communications; Public Communication; Data mining |
| Stratton, James | Department of English Language and Literatures | Linguistics; historical linguistics; Language variation and change |
| Sultan, Nazmul | Department of Political Science | Political science; history of political thought; empire and anticolonial thought; popular sovereignty; modern conceptions of the global |
| Sunar, Kiran | Department of Asian Studies | literature, religion, and culture in Punjab |
| Sundberg, Juanita | Department of Geography | Militarization and Everyday Life in the US-Mexico Borderlands, environmental dimensions of US's border security policies in the Mexican border |
Pages
Graduate Student Stories
- ‹ previous
- 20 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 |
|---|---|---|
| 2022 | Often seen as threats to urban society, crowds are also presented as utopian entities. Dr. Daniels' research demonstrated how digital crowds and thinking about crowds were reimagined as offering solutions to the problems of urban austerity in the United Kingdom. This informs our understanding of the impact of digital economies on urban development. | Doctor of Philosophy in Geography (PhD) |
| 2022 | Dr. Koike analyzed the effectiveness of Japanese nonprofits that promote men's engagement in parenting to improve fathers' lives, lessen burdens on women, and help raise Japan's birthrate. His research found pervasive ideological and structural barriers and conflicts of interest that undermine the spread of family-oriented masculinities. | Doctor of Philosophy in Anthropology (PhD) |
| 2022 | Dr. González-Espinosa studied the influence of thermal stress and solar radiation on mass coral bleaching patterns globally through numerical models. Furthermore, he demonstrated the value of including driving variables such as cloudiness when examining the fate of coral reefs under different greenhouse gas emission scenarios. | Doctor of Philosophy in Geography (PhD) |
| 2022 | Dr. Evans examined records retention and disposition in Canadian organizations. She found that by aligning information governance efforts and leveraging digital technologies, records managers, archivists, and technologists could significantly decrease the climate impacts of information and communication technology on the environment. | Doctor of Philosophy in Library, Archival and Information Studies (PhD) |
| 2022 | Dr. Khatami examined the role that exiles play in shaping politics and history. Comparing cases from North America to the Middle East, his study demonstrates how the excluded use artistic means to reconstitute the societies they live in. This research offers a new perspective on democratic thinking and the role of art in political life. | Doctor of Philosophy in Political Science (PhD) |
| 2022 | Dr. Haddock's research advances our understanding of the nature of the relationships between children's theory of mind and social-emotional functioning by providing a comprehensive account of these relationships, and highlighting that complex mental state understanding is of particular importance to children's social-emotional wellbeing. | Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology (PhD) |
| 2022 | Dr. Ortiz examines the role of the magazines in the early twentieth-century intellectual and cultural fields of the Andes. He analyzes how magazines become a dispositif that operates in-between the aesthetic and political ideologies discussed and disputed in the interplay of avant-garde movements, political revolutions, and social transformations. | Doctor of Philosophy in Hispanic Studies (PhD) |
| 2022 | Dr. Topp explored the intersections between virtual reality technology and music composition and performance. His research resulted in the development of Virtual Reality - Open Sound Control, an open platform for networking virtual reality interactions with modern music creation tools. | Doctor of Musical Arts in Composition (DMA) |
| 2022 | Dr. Alonzo studied the interactions between geographic mobility and marriage markets. He showed that marriage increases the concentration of workers in high-productivity areas by affecting their migration patterns. His research highlights the role of families in shaping the geography of economic activity. | Doctor of Philosophy in Economics (PhD) |
| 2022 | Dr. Robb investigated the impacts of decarbonization on Canada's physical and cultural landscapes. His research developed new place-based methods to visualize, design, and evaluate potential pathways toward Canada's post-carbon future. | Doctor of Philosophy in Geography (PhD) |