Katelynn Kowalchuk
Doctor of Philosophy in Political Science (PhD)
Mental healthcare governance in Canada: Contemporary and historical catalysts for evolution and stagnation
Canadian Immigration Updates
Review details about the recently announced changes to study and work permits that apply to master’s and doctoral degree students. Read more
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Cooper, Elisabeth | Department of Ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern Studies | Archaeology of greater Mesopotamia |
| Copeland, Brian | Vancouver School of Economics | International trade, environmental economics, interaction between globalization, the environment, and the sustainability of renewable resources |
| Corrigall-Brown, Catherine | Department of Sociology | Sociology; social movements; identity; political sociology; social psychology |
| Coulthard, Lisa | Department of Theatre & Film | film theory and violence; film sound and violence, contemporary American and European cinemas, continental philosophy and Lacanian theory |
| Coulthard, Glen | Institute for Critical Indigenous Studies, Department of Political Science | First Nations politics – national; political theory |
| Creighton, Millie | Department of Anthropology | Japan, Japanese descent communities (Nikkei or Nikkeijin), Korea, Inter-Asian Relations, Identity, Consumerism, Popular and Mass Culture, Gender, Minorities, Work and Leisure |
| Crowston, Clare | Department of History | history of early modern France, history of labor, women and gender, material culture, economic exchange, and fashion |
| Cutler, Frederick | Department of Political Science | Social movements and democracy; public opinion; Political Methodology; Canadian Politics; Elections; Electoral Systems; Federalism; Academic Publishing Systems |
| Dadugblor, Stephen | School of Journalism, Writing, and Media | English language; Rhetoric; Digital media/social media; democratic deliberation; decoloniality; writing studies; African Studies |
| Dalziel, Pamela | Department of English Language and Literatures | Victorian-literature, Victorian-culture, visual-representation, illustration, gender-studies, religion, interdisciplinary-studies, textual-criticism, scholarly-editing, Thomas-Hardy, Charles-Dickens, George-Eliot |
| Dancygier, Barbara | Department of English Language and Literatures | Linguistics, grammar |
| Daniels, Megan | Department of Ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern Studies | Classical religion; Archaeology of Greece and the broader eastern Mediterranean; Late Bronze Age to Hellenistic Period; Ancient religion, sanctuaries, votive objects; Cross-cultural interaction; Ancient economies and trade; Divine kingship; Digital/data science approaches to the ancient world, particularly ancient religion; Migration and mobility across Eurasia; Phoenician culture; Ceramic analysis |
| Dauvergne, Peter | Department of Political Science | Social sciences; international relations; global environmental politics; sustainability governance; global South; Developing countries; transnational corporations; technology; consumption; Plastic Pollution; social movements; environmentalism; activism; deforestation |
| Davis, Ryan | School of Music | Strings |
| Davis, Henry Thomas | Department of Linguistics | First Nations languages |
| Dawson, Samantha | Department of Psychology | Psychology and cognitive sciences; Interventions for sexual dysfunction; Sexual function and dysfunction in individuals and couples |
| De Angelis, Franco | Department of Ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern Studies | Ancient Greek world history, environment, urbanism, developmnet of societies, colonization, economics, ancient literature |
| de Villiers, Jessica | Department of English Language and Literatures | Linguistics |
| Dechaine, Rose-Marie | Department of Linguistics | Native American languages; Algonquian language family, Cree, Blackfoot, Ojibwe; French / English bilingualism policy; formal linguistics; generative grammar (Chomsky); West African languages (Niger-Congo, Yoruba, Igbo, Edo); Nigerian languages; literacy vs. oralcy; language planning re: French, Indigenous languages, Speech/gesture coordination, syntactic interface relations |
| Deer, Glenn | Department of English Language and Literatures | discourse studies, the rhetoric of power in narrative fiction, and postmodernism and Canadian Literature |
| DeLongis, Anita | Department of Psychology | Psychology and cognitive sciences; social determinants of health; chronic illness; coping; couples; families; health; Health Psychology; marriage; social support; stress |
| Dempsey, Jessica | Department of Geography | wrestle with the theoretical and historical-geographical complexities of environmental politics as it shapes and is shaped by the entanglement of state, economy, science, and culture |
| Devereux, Michael | Vancouver School of Economics | Economics, Macro and Monetary Economics Economic Policy, Monetary and Fiscal Policy, Deficits, Exchange Rates, Capital Flows, Financial Crises, International, monetary |
| Dick, Alexander | Department of English Language and Literatures | Literary or Artistic Work Analysis; Philosophy, History and Comparative Studies; Artistic and Literary Theories; Arts, Literature and Subjectivity; British Romanticism; Scottish Enlightenment; Literature and Economics; Literature and the Environment; Literature and Science; Scottish Literature |
| Dierkes, Julian | School of Public Policy and Global Affairs | Sociology, n.e.c.; All other social sciences, n.e.c.; Sociology of education; Public Policy; Mongolia; policy communication; contemporary Japan; digital diplomacy; supplementary education; mining policy; Japanese education; Democratization |
Pages
Graduate Student Stories
- ‹ previous
- 5 of 15
- next ›
Alumni on Success
- ‹ previous
- 5 of 5
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)
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 |
|---|---|---|
| 2024 | Dr. Robles studied changing perceptions of nature and culture in Southern Cone narratives, focusing on Pampas and Patagonia from the 19th to 21st centuries. He argues that views shifted from transforming nature to defending it due to increasing human intervention, once seen as minimal but now viewed as significant, sparking a push for protection. | Doctor of Philosophy in Hispanic Studies (PhD) |
| 2024 | Dr. Hak Hepburn argued that paying attention to the social relations people maintain with trees and forests provided insight into environmental governance. By following Peruvian Amazonian relations with land, timber, trees, seeds and forests, her work brings a new and nuanced understanding of tropical deforestation and restoration practices. | Doctor of Philosophy in Anthropology (PhD) |
| 2024 | Dr. Pearson studied epistemic agency - the agency we have over what we believe. She proposed an alternative to the dominant control-based accounts of this concept, arguing instead that epistemic agency centrally involves the ability to set one’s epistemic contexts by determining which possibilities to take seriously. | Doctor of Philosophy in Philosophy (PhD) |
| 2024 | Dr. Tonita bridged the gap between feminist theory, political philosophy, and piano performance. Her research highlights the oppression women in music have faced throughout history and offers pianists--female and beyond--opportunities to reclaim agency by using the physical voice in the concert space. | Doctor of Musical Arts in Piano (DMA) |
| 2024 | Dr. Hanlon’s research investigated several poetry matches from tenth- to twelfth-century Japan. His research examined matches with clever riddles, sassy love poems, and political drama, provided insight into the history of Japanese poetic games, and included translations and explanations for 140 waka poems. | Doctor of Philosophy in Asian Studies (PhD) |
| 2024 | Dr. Zhang developed machine learning systems that enhanced the understanding of semantic meanings in language, capturing the nuances of human reactions, communications, and intentions beyond words. He proposed novel language representation learning methods that utilize pragmatic signals to more effectively learn human language, leveraging vast amounts of social media data. | Doctor of Philosophy in Library, Archival and Information Studies (PhD) |
| 2024 | Dr. Gomez-Cardona examined the accumulation of financial literacy and its role in households' portfolios. He found that people learn by investing in financial assets and benefit from financial education by having more access to liquidity when needed. His research highlights new ways in which financial education improves household welfare. | Doctor of Philosophy in Economics (PhD) |
| 2024 | Dr. Malloy developed a framework for listening to what she calls "weak hope" in contemporary song lyrics: realistic, ethical hope assembled from beyond the margins of conventional sources of strength. Listening for weak hope, she argues, can help people make it through and beyond trauma. | Doctor of Philosophy in English (PhD) |
| 2024 | Dr. Angeli used field experiments and economic theory to study the labor market, social media, and social coordination. He has shown how holding pessimistic beliefs about discrimination can make it harder for someone to find a job, implying that policies addressing labor market discrimination should also consider effects on jobseekers' beliefs. | Doctor of Philosophy in Economics (PhD) |
| 2024 | Dr. Molnar examined how Goryeo Korea became globally integrated through human and material mobilities into China, the Eurasian steppe, and the larger world of maritime exchange during the Mongol Empire that linked Korea with southeast Asia, Central Asia, the Middle East, and Europe. This work shows that Goryeo Korea was an active participant in the Mongols' imperial project. | Doctor of Philosophy in History (PhD) |