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 |
|---|---|---|
| 2009 | Dr. Wong theoretically studied decentralized markets with search frictions and incomplete information, like the labor and the housing markets. His studies help us understand how search frictions and incomplete information interact in shaping the market outcomes, and how the market outcomes converge when search frictions become small. | Doctor of Philosophy in Economics (PhD) |
| 2009 | Dr. Thistle examined the environmental histories of ranching and pest eradication in British Columbia's grasslands in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and recognized the mobilization of people and state institutions against animals and pests as another dimension of militarism and modern warfare. | Doctor of Philosophy in Geography (PhD) |
| 2009 | Dr. Rus studied the `commons' problem in renewable resource exploitation in conjunction with several types of additional externalities. These include cross-sectoral domestic spillover effects in a diversified economy, transboundary effects, as well as the distributional implications and local scarcity induced by inefficient management regimes. | Doctor of Philosophy in Economics (PhD) |
| 2009 | Dr. Windover examined socio-political consequences of Art Deco architecture and design. He showed how this interwar style, while appearing fashionably new, ultimately reinscribed pre-existing social hierarchies. Situating Art Deco within networks of international economic and cultural exchange, his work provides new ways to approach the subject. | Doctor of Philosophy in Art History (PhD) |
| 2009 | Dr. Duncan investigated the influence of psychological disease-avoidance mechanisms on the way that people perceive and respond to other individuals in their social environment. The results have implications for understanding the psychological origins of prejudices, and for reducing those prejudices. | Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology (PhD) |
| 2009 | Dr. Fortney examined and critiqued power relationships between First Nations and museums, from how concepts of collaboration are understood, to the ways museums work with communities to implement projects. Her research provides insights into the perspectives of Coast Salish communities, identifying areas where relationships can be strengthened. | Doctor of Philosophy in Anthropology (PhD) |
| 2009 | Dr. Thomas found that heterosexual university men at low risk for sexual aggression were just as likely as high-risk men to behave in a sexually aggressive manner, following exposure to sexually coercive material. This research suggests that even fleeting exposure to such material can increase risk for sexual aggression. | Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology (PhD) |
| 2009 | Dr. Springer developed a postanarchist analysis of the intersections between free-market neoliberalism and the geographies of violence in Cambodia. Through a series of theoretical dialogues, Dr Springer sought to open geographical imaginations to the possibility of remaking space in ways that make possible a transformative and emancipatory politics. | Doctor of Philosophy in Geography (PhD) |
| 2009 | Dr. Fajardo examined the existential and phenomenological writing of the highly distinguished, albeit controversial, contemporary gay Spanish novelist and philosopher, Álvaro Pombo. In his research Dr. Fajardo showed that Pombo is above all, and despite what his critics say, a writer of great optimism and hope about the human condition. | Doctor of Philosophy in Hispanic Studies (PhD) |
| 2009 | Dr. Covello's work concerns the literature of the Northwest Territories. She examined two early explorer narratives and two indigenous narratives and showed how recent indigenous work writes back to early Eurocentric narrative constructions of North to reveal new and important perceptions of the NWT. | Doctor of Philosophy in English (PhD) |