Photo: Martin Dee
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Kadir, Aynur | Department of Asian Studies, Institute for Critical Indigenous Studies | Documentation, conservation and revitalization of Indigenous cultures and languages, Uyghur literature, musical traditions and cultural practices, global indigeneity from the Uyghur in China to Coast Salish and Six Nations in Canada, transnational Indigenous diplomacy, safeguarding and revitalization of languages and cultural heritage |
| Kam, Christopher | Department of Political Science | Nature and evolution of parliamentary democracy, historical development of institutions |
| Kamat, Vinay Ramnath | Department of Anthropology | Anthropology; Global Health and Emerging Diseases; Dispossession; East Africa; ethnography; Extractive Industry; Global Health; India; Malaria; marine conservation; Medical Anthropology; Outsourcing of Clinical Trials; political ecology; Tanzania |
| Kandlikar, Milind | School of Public Policy and Global Affairs, Institute for Resources, Environment & Sustainability | Climate change impacts and adaptation; Product life cycle; Environmental policy; Research, science and technology policy; Environmental impacts; Climate Change and energy transition; Technological Risk; Technology and Development |
| Karimi, Aryan | Department of Sociology | Race and ethnic relations; Sociological methodology and research methods; Sociology and social studies of science and technology; Social relations; migration and refugee studies; ethnic and racial boundaries studies; assimilation, integration, transnationalism; Research methods |
| Karki, Karun | School of Social Work | sense of belonging among the racialized diaspora and minoritized communities, ethno-racial and gender segregation in the Canadian labour market, social determinants of health of diasporic and marginalized communities |
| Karwowska, Bozena | Department of Central, Eastern & Northern European Studies | Sexuality, Body and Gender in Nazi Concentration Camps |
| Kasahara, Hiroyuki | Vancouver School of Economics | Econometrics and international trade |
| Kemple, Thomas | Department of Central, Eastern & Northern European Studies | Social and cultural theory, history of social sciences, literary and interpretive methods, aesthetic sociology, visual representation of concepts and arguments |
| Kerns, Connor | Department of Psychology | assessment and treatment of autism spectrum disorder (ASD); childhood anxiety and stress-related disorders; trauma-related disorders; Autism; Anxiety; Comorbidity |
| Khanna, Tarun | School of Public Policy and Global Affairs | Economics; Renewable energy systems (except smart systems engineering); Environmental policy; energy economics; Evidence synthesis; policy evaluation; electricity markets; energy in development; decarbonization of the energy sector |
| Kia, Hannah | School of Social Work | LGBTQ2S+ health; LGBTQ2S+ aging; social work and other professional practice with sexual and gender minorities; effective social work practice with trans and gender diverse people; poverty, sexual and mental health issues among diverse LGBTQ2S+ populations |
| Kim, Christine | Department of English Language and Literatures | English language; Asian North American literature and theory; Canadian Literature; Cultural Studies; Diaspora Studies |
| Kim, Sooyeon | School of Public Policy and Global Affairs | international political economy, trade politics, politics of trade agreements |
| Kim, Eric | Department of Psychology | Health psychology; Psychosocial, sociocultural and behavioral determinants of health; Epidemiology (except nutritional and veterinary epidemiology); psychological well-being; Purpose in life / Meaning in life; resilience; Optimism / Hope; Health Psychology; Social Epidemiology; Aging |
| King, Ross | Department of Asian Studies | Historical linguistics, diachronics, and dialectology; Korean philology; history of Korean literary culture; Korean historical linguistics; Korean dialectology; history of the Sinographic Cosmopolis |
| Kingstone, Alan | Department of Psychology | Cognitive sciences; Brain mechanisms of human perception, attention, and behaviour in experimental & everyday situations |
| Klein, Peter | School of Journalism, Writing, and Media | Media Types (Radio, Television, Written Press, etc.); Video and New Media; Global Health and Emerging Diseases; Large International Projects; Media and Democratization; Global Journalism; Innovation in Journalism; Documentary Production; Investigative Reporting |
| Klein, Naomi | Department of Geography | crisis and political transformation, large-scale shocks as catalysts and accelerators for broad-based social change |
| Klonsky, Elisha | Department of Psychology | Clinical psychology; Suicide (theory, motivations, transition from suicidal thoughts to attempts); Metascience; Emotion; Psychological/Clinical Assessment |
| Koh, Germaine | Department of Art History, Visual Art & Theory | Visual art |
| Kojevnikov, Alexei | Department of History | Modern history of science, especially physics, science, society,and culture, Russia and Soviet History, Nuclear History and the Cold War |
| Koncan, Frances | School of Creative Writing | |
| Koppes, Michele | Department of Geography | climate change, glaciers, natural hazards, landscape change, polar regions, ice-ocean interactions |
| Kramer, Jennifer | Department of Anthropology | Visual culture and art of the First Nations |
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. 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) |
| 2024 | Dr. Whetung's research argues that practicing Nishnaabeg place-based relationships in everyday life contributes to building alternative worlds that both respond to violence, and actively create a new world in which violence is unimaginable. | Doctor of Philosophy in Geography (PhD) |
| 2024 | Dr. Yip's thesis examined how our human tendency to mind-wander impacts our negative moods, and how this tendency helps to explain the clinical challenges of depression and ruminative thinking. Her insights show how regulating our emotions may impact our awareness, intention, and control over our thoughts. | Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology (PhD) |
| 2024 | Dr. Shamei demonstrated that humans employ posture within the vocal tract when speaking, and that the control of posture is similar across gross and fine motor skills. These findings help to unify our understanding of human motor control across different domains. | Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics (PhD) |
| 2024 | Dr. Triponez investigated the archival preservation of independent music production by interviewing music creators. He found that social and technological disruption, evolving creative practices, and the abundance of archival material pose preservation problems that result in an ongoing loss of documentary cultural heritage. | Doctor of Philosophy in Library, Archival and Information Studies (PhD) |
| 2024 | Dr. Heltzel finds that people typically like political allies who engage constructively with opponents. And yet, US Senators' social media posts get more likes and shares when they dismiss opponents because active extremists prefer such content. For this and other reasons, people incorrectly expect backlash for engaging with opponents. | Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology (PhD) |
| 2024 | Dr. Mellema studied Modern Art specializing in Marxist feminism. Her dissertation provides an account of how artists index socially reproductive labour, the daily labour needed to sustain human beings and social communities. Her dissertation provides a corrective to art historical accounts that have ignored gendered labour and working people. | Doctor of Philosophy in Art History (PhD) |
| 2024 | Dr. Dowd built on more than a decade of field experience in the Himalaya to create an ethnographic portrait of the Tibetan language and its role in Buddhist transmission. He argues transmission represents the culmination of silence, speech and writing, where these three modes of language converge to transmit the Buddha's teachings. | Doctor of Philosophy in Anthropology (PhD) |
| 2024 | Dr. Tilton examines feminist critiques of "traditional" epistemology, which is individualistic and assumes that epistemic standards are neutral. She links feminist critiques of traditional epistemology to a creeping anxiety that is undermining feminist epistemology's political possibilities, urging a return to more traditional notions of objectivity. | Doctor of Philosophy in Philosophy (PhD) |
