Emily Lawson
Doctor of Philosophy in Philosophy (PhD)
Life's Painful Beauty: Open Empathy, Rasa Theory, and Deathbed Aesthetics
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.
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; modern Iran; Iranian/Persianate studies through fiction, drama, poetry, cinema, andnonfiction |
Abrutyn, Seth | Department of Sociology | Social theory; Sociology and social studies of health, health systems and health care; Sociological Theory; Youth Suicide; Sociology of Emotion; Culture; Medical/Mental Health; Institutions/Organizations |
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; Human rights, justice, and ethical issues; Islam; Muslims; Religion; Law; Theology; ethics; Philosophy |
Akinwole, Tolulope | Department of English Language and Literatures | |
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 |
An, Ji-yoon | Department of Asian Studies | Korean cinema, K-drama, Rise of Hallyu, Diasporic cinema, Diasporic identity, Identity and cultural flows, Monsters of different cultures |
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. |
Anderson, L. Mark | School of Music | Piano, Piano Pedagogy |
Anderson, Siwan | Vancouver School of Economics | Micro-level institutions, role of gender, studies of rural governments |
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 |
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 |
---|---|---|
2024 | Dr. Albuquerque investigates topics in the field of the economics of crime and violence, focusing on Latin America and its recent history. The studies that compose his dissertation highlight the interplay between historical events, trust, state capacity, cultural diversity, and political structures in determining the levels of violence and crime. | Doctor of Philosophy in Economics (PhD) |
2024 | Dr. Diwan studied how and why audiences in India watch video streaming media. Her work shows the role of factors like language, geolocation, fandom etc. in digital viewership practices. By theorizing this set of audience behavior, she developed the concept of the interactive viewer to advance the understanding of digital audiences in Media Studies. | Doctor of Philosophy in Asian Studies (PhD) |
2024 | Dr. Burge studied how relationality plays a role in the revitalization of Lingít, an Indigenous language spoken in the Pacific Northwest. Her work reflects on ideas of gender, identity, organizational structures and academia, and how the intersection of those themes speaks to the active fight to reclaim Lingít as a language, and as a community. | Doctor of Philosophy in Anthropology (PhD) |
2024 | Dr. Deberdt addressed the unequal nature of green transition supply chains through the example of cobalt from the Congo. His dissertation demonstrates the greenwashing at stake in the fight against climate change and the more or less unintended human rights abuses of these processes. | Doctor of Philosophy in Anthropology (PhD) |
2024 | For her doctoral work, Dr. Bok studied on a global scale the people who think they are capable of providing cities with solutions. Her research found that many of these "solutions" remained unproven and unevaluated, often tangential to what cities really need. It might be of interest to people who work in the area of municipal policy. | Doctor of Philosophy in Geography (PhD) |
2024 | How do actors protect their wellbeing, nurture their creativity, and cultivate an ensemble so supportive it embraces its audience? Dr. Fogal studied the theatre training of her four primary mentors including her father Dean Fogal. Preserving their oral traditions through text and film, she illuminates the deeply relational nature of their techniques. | Doctor of Philosophy in Theatre (PhD) |
2024 | Dr. Chew examined how ethnic identity affects different types of political attitudes and behaviour in Myanmar and Singapore. She found that its effects are conditioned by institutions and the interests that they generate. Her findings have implications for policymaking in ethnically diverse societies. | Doctor of Philosophy in Political Science (PhD) |
2024 | Dr. Manuel's research proposed a literary theory centered in the land and in the relations-based practices of the Syilx Okanagan people. The theory imagines new and dynamic methods of engaging with Indigenous literature beyond its textual form to also include stories told through the land, the body, and through dreams. | Doctor of Philosophy in English (PhD) |
2024 | Dr. Payne created a novel auto-classification process that leverages a record's context, not just its content, to improve classification accuracy. His research in artificial intelligence, context, and computational archival science, will help organizations around the world more effectively classify, organize and activate data and information. | Doctor of Philosophy in Library, Archival and Information Studies (PhD) |
2024 | Dr. Possnig studied how algorithmic learning by firms affects prices. He showed what kinds of behaviours can be learned by competing algorithms, depending on the market and details of the algorithms. He used this approach to determine when and how collusive behaviours will emerge from algorithmic competition. | Doctor of Philosophy in Economics (PhD) |