Photo: Martin Dee
Applicants to Master’s and Doctoral degrees are not affected by the recently announced cap on study permits. Review more details
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.
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 |
|---|---|---|
| 2010 | Dr. Aiken examined the causal relationship between identity, transitional justice, and post-conflict reconciliation in the deeply divided societies of South Africa and Northern Ireland. This research promises to help inform 'best practices' for future justice interventions to be used in post-conflict peacebuilding efforts. | Doctor of Philosophy in Political Science (PhD) |
| 2010 | Dr. Stumm examines the nature and role of ethical responsibility in witnessing the lives and stories of vulnerable subjects. She reveals how the philosophical ethics of Emmanuel Levinas and Paul Ricoeur can be brought to bear on one's relational practices with others in the process of narrating their lives. | Doctor of Philosophy in English (PhD) |
| 2010 | Dr. Jackson studied the effects of ethnic diversity on public good provision. He finds that local and regional diversity are associated with reduced access to piped drinking water and electricity respectively, in Sub-Saharan Africa. Critical for future policy design, this effect is not due to discrimination against local minority groups. | Doctor of Philosophy in Economics (PhD) |
| 2010 | Dr. Mah examined cultural differences in mothers? attitudes towards parenting techniques for managing child behavior problems. She found that both Chinese-immigrant and Euro-Canadian mothers respect and intend to use behavioural techniques, but differ in their views towards punishment. This research informs strategies for promoting culturally sensitive and effective psychological interventions. | Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology (PhD) |
| 2010 | Dr. Yeung showed that making articulatory movements with one's lips, tongue, and jaw influences the perception of speech in adults, as well as in 4-month-old infants. This work shows that speech production is closely related to speech perception from early in development, even before infants begin producing clear speech themselves. | Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology (PhD) |
| 2010 | Dr. Blackwell examined the link between various emotional styles and biological health in young women. She found that negative emotions predicted less optimal metabolic symptoms, whereas positive emotions were unrelated to these outcomes. This research suggests that interventions aimed at decreasing negative affect may reduce future risk for disease. | Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology (PhD) |
| 2010 | Dr. Hanson studied the effects of childhood environment on biological responses to stress in adulthood. She found that individuals from more difficult childhood environments had greater biological responses to daily stressors, including greater cortisol secretion and sleep disturbances. Over time, these increased stress responses may make them more susceptible to disease. | Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology (PhD) |
| 2010 | Dr. Dalrymple examined how the human brain creates an individual?s representation of the visual world by studying patients with brain injury who can only see one object at a time. Her work supports the theory that the perception of space is imperative to visually defining the objects that we see. | Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology (PhD) |
| 2010 | Dr. Boothe's research asks why Canada is the only advanced welfare state that lacks nation-wide pharmaceutical insurance, despite its universal hospital and medical programs. She finds that the key is incrementalism, as approaching policy development in stages makes it less likely that a full range of services will be adopted. | Doctor of Philosophy in Political Science (PhD) |
| 2010 | Dr. Tang's dissertation studies the responses of Canadian manufacturing industries to the recent rise in the value of the Canadian dollar and the comparison of modern macroeconomic models' ability to capture data patterns. | Doctor of Philosophy in Economics (PhD) |