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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 |
|---|---|---|
| Nathan, Lisa | School of Information | Social relations; Critical studies of technology; climate change adaptation; Indigenous Information Studies; Information Ethics & Policy |
| Nelson, Laura | Department of Sociology | Social movements, culture, gender, and organizations and institutions, Processes around the formation of collective identities, Social movement strategy in feminist and environmental movements, Continuities between cycles of activism and the role of place in shaping social movement activity, Intersectionality in U.S. women’s movements, Coverage of social movements in news media over time, Ways in which history is recorded and remembered, Gender inequality in startups and entrepreneurship |
| Nicholson, Cecily | School of Creative Writing | Languages and literature; Poetry |
| Nobiss, Jac | School of Social Work | |
| Norenzayan, Ara | Department of Psychology | social psychology; cultural psychology; evolutionary psychology; religion; culture; human cooperation; human universals; thinking across cultures, Psychology of religious thought and behavior, religious diversity, cooperation and conflict, issues of cultural variability and universality in human behavior, and cultural evolution, broadly conceived |
| Norris, Samuel | Vancouver School of Economics | Economics and business administration; Education; Crime; labor economics |
| Nunn, Nathan | Vancouver School of Economics | Economics; Political economy; Economic History; economic development; cultural economics; international trade |
| O'Brien, Heather | School of Information | All other social sciences, n.e.c.; user engagement; user experience; community engagement; information seeking and retrieval; information access; cognitive processes related to information searching and evaluation; health technologies |
| O'Connor, Deborah | School of Social Work | family support to frail or mentally impaired seniors; formal support services, Dementia, the interface between living with dementia, family care, and the use of formal support services |
| Oberoi, Harjot Singh | Department of Asian Studies | South asia, how classical empires shaped the British Raj in India, critical theory, the formation of private libraries, law and society, transnational cultures, and complex systems |
| Odic, Darko | Department of Psychology | Cognitive development |
| Ohlin, Alix | School of Creative Writing | Fiction; Screenwriting; Environmental writing |
| Ongchoco, Joan | Department of Psychology | Sensory processes, perception and performance; Memory (including episodic and semantic memory, and working memory); Judgement and decision making; Cognitive Science; Perception, attention, and memory |
| Orbaugh, Sharalyn | Department of Asian Studies | modern Japanese culture (literature, film, manga, animation, kamishibai); East Asian women’s issues; anti-racist pegagogy, Japanese narrative and visual culture |
| Orell, Julia | Department of Art History, Visual Art & Theory | History of Chinese Art; Landscape painting of the Song and Yuan dynasties; Construction of place, site, region, and empire in painting and other visual media; Art and the production of knowledge; Cultural and historical geography; History of cartography |
| Ostwald, Kai | School of Public Policy and Global Affairs, Department of Political Science | Political science; Comparative Politics; Development; Southeast Asia; geopolitics; Elections; hybrid regimes and authoritarian politics |
| Pailer, Gaby | Department of Central, Eastern & Northern European Studies | German literature, gender and literature, drama and theatre, enlightment, classicism and romanticism |
| Palombo, Daniela | Department of Psychology | Psychology and cognitive sciences; Autobiographical memories; Cognitive Science; Imagination; Future Thinking |
| Paltin, Judith | Department of English Language and Literatures | English language; Literary or Artistic Work Analysis; Artistic and Literary Theories; Artistic and Literary Movements, Schools and Styles; Cultural Theory; Gender and Sexuality Studies; Literature and Mind; Literature and Music; Modernist Studies |
| Pareles, Mo | Department of English Language and Literatures | mutual construction of species; sexual and ethnic difference in medieval English religious literature |
| Paris, Leslie | Department of History | History of American childhood, History of American summer camps, Modern American social and cultural history, childhood and youth, gender and sexuality, popular culture |
| Park, Kyung Ae | School of Public Policy and Global Affairs | Korean politics (North and South Korea); U.S.-Korean relations; Korean unification, North and South Korean Politics, US-Korea Relations, Gender and Development |
| Partridge, Stephen | Department of English Language and Literatures | Middle Ages |
| Patterson, Christopher | Institute for Gender, Race, Sex and Social Justice | Transpacific discourses of literature, games, and films |
| Peck, Jamie | Department of Geography | Social and economic geography; Socio-Economic Conditions; Economic geography |
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 |
|---|---|---|
| 2023 | Political rallies have become a large part of electoral campaigns worldwide. What role do rallies play in shaping elections? Dr. Jha estimates a novel structural model of political rallies and their outcomes. He finds rallies persuasive and electorally pivotal in U.S and that the rallies in India are much more persuasive than in U.S. | Doctor of Philosophy in Economics (PhD) |
| 2023 | Dr. Pauker's cross-disciplinary work sketches intertwining genealogies of philosophy and journalism. Advocating philosophical journalism as a mode of critical questioning in the present, Pauker disrupts normative configurations of truth and truth-telling in journalism, philosophy, and knowledge production in the western tradition, more broadly. | Doctor of Philosophy in Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice (PhD) |
| 2023 | Dr. García Martínez developed the conceptual distinction between accumulation and cumulation. The former is a system of value built on the latter. He proposed that for our contemporary crisis, writing depicts a cumulation, a profuse pile-up, ever more resistant to the imposition of some kind of system of value. | Doctor of Philosophy in Hispanic Studies (PhD) |
| 2023 | Dr. Exler studied the hydrology of drained peatlands with a focus on how plant community shifts affect water exchange between the atmosphere and the peat body. His findings help understand how climate change may affect peatland ecohydrology, which is an integral part of ecosystem health in these environments that controls greenhouse gas release. | Doctor of Philosophy in Geography (PhD) |
| 2023 | How might we better alleviate poverty and mitigate inequality? Dr. Peng studied how satellite data reveals local political dynamics that impact developmental outcomes, how the success of global superpowers could influence the political attitudes of foreign citizens, and why those who qualify for social assistance might not take it up. | Doctor of Philosophy in Political Science (PhD) |
| 2023 | Dr. Khalis examined how social media usage and psychopathology impact one another. He found that certain aspects of social media usage can increase risk for depression, anxiety, and ADHD symptoms, and that psychopathology can also influence how we use social media. This research underscores the importance of mental health in the online context. | Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology (PhD) |
| 2023 | Dr. Liu examined the characteristics of the emerging pink market and the institutions within the pink economy in China. His research demonstrates how the state, sexuality, gender, sociocultural norms, and cultural trends shape market economies. | Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology (PhD) |
| 2023 | Dr. MacDonald examined a series of nineteenth-century representations of biofluids and epidemics to argue that authors used contagion metaphors in surprising ways - to articulate unexpected sites of contact, connection, and community. Her study contributes to modern conversations about how contagion can put us in touch in the post-COVID era. | Doctor of Philosophy in English (PhD) |
| 2023 | Dr. Lee explored how engaging in prosocial behavior, including acts of kindness and helping others, can help individuals restore their social connections. Her research suggests that an intervention promoting prosocial behavior is a promising approach to address loneliness and social isolation, particularly for individuals experiencing chronic loneliness. | Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology (PhD) |
| 2023 | Dr. Heard examined how the effectiveness of civilian harm response and compensation influences the ways in which the legitimacy of counterinsurgency operations are perceived by affected communities. This research illuminates the strategic role of survivor-centric approaches to harm mitigation and response in contemporary conflict. | Doctor of Philosophy in Political Science (PhD) |