Photo: Martin Dee
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.
| Name | Academic Unit(s) | Research Interests |
|---|---|---|
| Abdul-Mageed, Muhammad | Department of Linguistics | Artificial intelligence (AI); Deep Learning; Natural Language Processing; Machine Learning; Computational Linguistics; Social Media Mining; Arabic |
| Abedinifard, Mostafa | Department of Asian Studies | Literature and literary studies; Iran (Persian, etc.); Afghanistan (Dari; Pashto); Tajikistan (Tajik); Pakistan (Urdu); India; Iranian and Persianate studies through fiction, drama, poetry, and nonfiction; folk narratives; (global South) literary theory; literary histories; history of ideas & emotions; critical diversity studies (gender and sexuality; race; masculinities); comparative studies of literature; literature as world literature; diaspora literatures and cultures; food/cuisine, wellbeing, and environmental sustainability; ethnomusicology; scriptures as literature |
| Abrutyn, Seth | Department of Sociology | Social theory; Sociological Theory; Suicide; mental health; social psychology; Emotions; youth |
| Adriasola Munoz, Ignacio Alberto | Department of Art History, Visual Art & Theory | investigates responses by artists and intellectuals to the crisis of aesthetic and political representation triggered by the failed protests against the US-Japan Security Treaty of 1960, and in particular their reliance on depictions of the sexual and geographical margins in their articulation of an aesthetics of political disaffection. |
| Afsahi, Afsoun | Department of Political Science | Democratic theory and practice, Gender in politics, Challenges, opportunities, and best methods of inclusion, Representation of marginalized communities in democratic decision-making processes |
| Ahmed, Rumee | Department of Asian Studies | Islamic studies; Islam; Muslims; Religion; Law; Theology; ethics; Philosophy |
| Al-Kassim, Dina | Department of English Language and Literatures | Critical identity, ethnic and race studies; English language; Gender, sexuality and education; Human rights, justice, and ethical issues; anti-colonial; Artistic and Literary Movements, Schools and Styles; Artistic and Literary Theories; Arts and Cultural Traditions; Arts, Literature and Subjectivity; comparative literature: Arabic, English, French; feminist; Gender Relationship; Identity and Transnationality; Philosophy, History and Comparative Studies; postcolonial; psychoanalysis; queer theory; sexuality; Subjectivity |
| Al-Solaylee, Kamal | School of Journalism, Writing, and Media | Literary nonfiction, Race and representation, Migration studies |
| Alaica, Aleksa | Department of Anthropology | Other agricultural sciences; Archaeology; human-animal interactions; Moche Perceptions and Use of Animals; Food Security and Interregional Interaction during Wari State Expansion; Colonization, Diet and Animal Management |
| Alden, Lynn | Department of Psychology | Cognitive processes in the anxiety disorders, Social Anxiety Disorder, adult-onset Post-traumatic Stress Disorder, cognitive-behavior therapy |
| Alford-Duguid, Dominic | Department of Philosophy | Philosophy; Philosophy of mind/cognitive science; Philosophy of Language |
| Alvarez Moreno, Raul | Department of French, Hispanic & Italian Studies | Literary or Artistic Works Analysis; Artistic and Literary Movements, Schools and Styles; Artistic and Literary Theories; Literary or Artistic Work Dissemination or Reception Contexts; Language, Knowledge, Significance and Thought Building; Medieval and Early Modern Iberian Literature and Culture (Celestina, picaresque novel, short story); Economy and Medieval Literature and Culture; Visual Culture in Medieval and Early Modern Spain; Relations between Language and Ideology; travel writing |
| Amijee, Fatema | Department of Philosophy | Metaphysics; Modern Philosophy; feminist philosophy; History of Analytic Philosophy |
| Anderson, L. Mark | School of Music | Piano, Piano Pedagogy |
| Anderson, Kristin Siwan | Vancouver School of Economics | Micro-level institutions, role of gender, studies of rural governments |
| Anderson, Scott Allen | Department of Philosophy | intersection of ethics and social and political philosophy, largely focused on how to use and regulate power, coercion, and social norms; action theory and moral psychology, privacy, and problems related to the intensification of technology and information. |
| Anger, Suzy | Department of English Language and Literatures | Victorian Literature, Literature and Philosophy, Victorian Literature and Psychology, Victorian Literature and Science, Hermeneutics |
| Antwi, Phanuel | Department of English Language and Literatures | critical black studies; settler colonial studies; black Atlantic and diaspora studies; Canadian literature and culture since 1830; critical race, gender, and sexuality studies; and material cultures; |
| Arefin, Mohammed | Department of Geography | Human geography; History of sciences and technology (except medicine and health care); urban geography; discard studies; urban political ecology; Environmental justice; waste; sanitation; geographical political economy |
| Arneil, Barbara | Department of Political Science | Identity politics, history of political thought |
| Averill, Gage | Haitian music, barbershop harmony, sound, music and power, music and politics, Caribbean music, steelband, ethnomusicology, world music, Ethnomusicology, Haiti, Haitian diaspora, American Popular Culture, Trinidad and Tobago, and Traditional Irish Music | |
| Ayan, Irem | Department of French, Hispanic & Italian Studies | French language; Sociology of translation and interpreting; Gender and work exploitation; Emotional labour and work alienation; Fictional representations of translators and interpreters |
| Ayars, Alisabeth | Department of Philosophy | Ethics, Metaethics, Metaphysics, Moral Psychology, Epistemology, Cognitive Science |
| Aydede, Murat | Department of Philosophy | Philosophy of mind |
| Baada, Jemima | Department of Geography | intersections of gender, climate change, migration, health and development equity |
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 |
|---|---|---|
| 2022 | Dr. Sullivan explored the use of vocal works as a pedagogical tool for the bass trombone, and to expand the repertoire for the instrument from other periods of music history. In creating a new edition, he demonstrated that including the original text can inform musical decisions, adding to the body of works available to the bass trombone performer. | Doctor of Musical Arts in Orchestral Instrument (DMA) |
| 2022 | Dr. Lowik investigated the tactics that trans people undertake when accessing reproductive health care spaces that are not equipped to serve their needs. They found that the onus to remedy systematic erasure often falls on trans people and identified the structural forces that prevent this erasure from being addressed systematically. | Doctor of Philosophy in Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice (PhD) |
| 2022 | Dr. Anghelescu examined the prosody of words in Nata, an endangered language of Tanzania. They proposed a novel analysis of tone and vowel harmony in the nominal domain. This research contributes to our understanding of prosodic phonology in both Nata and language more generally. | Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics (PhD) |
| 2022 | Dr. Snelgrove argues that reconciliation is not possible in this society because self-determination remains subordinate to profit. But just as many of us have reasons to be anti-capitalist, we have reasons to desire a treaty relationship and to participate in a politics that aims at the flourishing of humans and more-than-humans. | Doctor of Philosophy in Political Science (PhD) |
| 2022 | Dr. Logan's research centered around Music Performance Anxiety, a highly prevalent condition with severe consequences affecting both professional and student musicians. She investigated whether an intervention could help university music students to manage MPA. Her dissertation demonstrated the urgency to begin implementing intervention programs. | Doctor of Musical Arts in Piano (DMA) |
| 2022 | From 2015 to 2021, Dr. Bhandal led a research project to study social justice perspectives in Canadian nursing and medical education. Specifically, she focused on two areas of theory and practice from social justice studies, decolonization and intersectionality. The findings have been published in various academic and popular venues. | Doctor of Philosophy in Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice (PhD) |
| 2022 | Dr. Barta examined the myth of American innocence in post-Cold War U.S. fiction and film. He found that films and novels of this period demonstrate the ongoing influence of this myth in American culture. His study makes significant connections between American innocence and public consensus for post-9/11 American wars. | Doctor of Philosophy in English (PhD) |
| 2022 | Dr. Volfova studied Kaska Dene contemporary responses to Indigenous language marginalization, highlighting ongoing linguistic vitality and self-determination. Analysis of these responses deepens our understanding of language revitalization, illuminating areas of agency, resiliency, and how these responses inform the language's future directions. | Doctor of Philosophy in Anthropology (PhD) |
| 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) |
