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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 |
|---|---|---|
| Salgirli, Saygin | Department of Art History, Visual Art & Theory | History of art and architecture; Architectural history and theory; Art theory and analysis; Ottoman Art, Islamic Art, Medieval Art, Early Modern Art, Mediterranean Art, Architectural History |
| Santos, Alessandra | Department of Theatre & Film | Cinema studies; Film, television and digital media; Latin American history; Latin American literatures; Spanish language; Artistic and Literary Analysis Models; Artistic and Literary Theories; Arts and Cultural Traditions; Arts and Technologies; Brazilian Literature and Culture; Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies; Latin American Literatures and Cultures; Modern and Contemporary Literatures and Cultures |
| Sari, Elif | Department of Anthropology | transnational sexualities; migration; asylum; humanitarianism; queer and critical race theory |
| Sarsons, Heather | Vancouver School of Economics | Economics; labour, personnel, and behavioural economics |
| Sathaye, Adheesh | Department of Asian Studies | early medieval Sanskrit drama, aesthetics, and narrative literature; Sanskrit epics, Marathi devotional performance traditions, and theories of textual production, performance, and folkloristics; South Asian folklore, narrative theory, and cultural studies |
| Savalei, Victoria | Department of Psychology | Latent variable modeling, especially structural equation modeling (SEM) Development of new statistical methods to handle incomplete data, nonnormal data, and categorical data |
| Schabas, Margaret | Department of Philosophy | History and philosophy of economics; Economics and business administration; History and Philosophy of Economics; Philosophy, History and Comparative Studies; science studies; History of Early Modern Philosophy; British Empiricists |
| Schaller, Mark | Department of Psychology | Psychology and cognitive sciences; Motivations and Emotions; Psychology - Biological Aspects; Evolutionary Psychology; Social Cognition; Social influence; social psychology |
| Schmader, Toni | Department of Psychology | Social sciences; Stereotyping and Prejudice; Gender and Gender Roles; Implicit Bias and Social Identity Threat; Authenticity and Belonging; Cultural Constraints; Occupational Segregation |
| Schneider, Thomas | Department of Ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern Studies | Egyptian history and phonoly |
| Scholte, Tom | Department of Theatre & Film | Theatre, film, and television |
| Schrimpf, Paul | Vancouver School of Economics | theoretical and applied econometrics; dynamic games, partial identification, and insurance |
| Schwartz, Naomi Beth | Department of Geography | Social and economic geography; community ecology; Ecosystem Services and Conservation Policy; Environmental Change; GIS; remote sensing; Tropical forest landscapes |
| Severinov, Sergei | Vancouver School of Economics | Auctions, industrial organization theory, water markets in developing nations |
| Severs, Jeffrey | Department of English Language and Literatures | Humanities and the arts; American Literature; Postmodernism |
| Shaffer, Elizabeth | School of Information | intersections of race, gender, and digital infrastructures and technologies |
| Shakya, Tsering | School of Public Policy and Global Affairs, Department of Asian Studies | confluence of politics, ethno-national identity and religious practice in cultural production and social transformation across both historical and contemporary Tibet and the Himalayas; contemporary minority policy and social media in the PRC. |
| Shariff, Azim | Department of Psychology | Psychology of Religion; Evolutionary Psychology; Cultural Evolution; Moral Psychology; Emotion; social psychology; Cross Cultural Psychology; Motivational Psychology; Philosophy of Religion; Human-technology interactions; Ethics of automation (self driving cars) |
| Sharon, Rena | School of Music | chamber music and conflict resolution, art song / lieder, young artist experience summer camp |
| Shelton, Anthony | Department of Art History, Visual Art & Theory | Mexican and Andean visual culture, critical museology, development of folk art, aesthetics |
| Sherpa, Pasang | Institute for Critical Indigenous Studies, Department of Asian Studies | Climate change and Indigeneity among Himalayan communities, Nepal and the Himalayas, Environment |
| Shin, Leo | Department of History, Department of Asian Studies | Later imperial China |
| Shirazi, Sadia | Department of Art History, Visual Art & Theory | transregional histories of modernism and contemporary art; histories of art; art and activism; race and racialization; migration and diaspora; gender and sexuality; black and postcolonial thought |
| Shneiderman, Sara | Department of Anthropology, School of Public Policy and Global Affairs | Social and cultural anthropology; Indigenous issues; Disaster response and preparedness; Citizenship; migration |
| Sia, Rosanne | Institute for Gender, Race, Sex and Social Justice | Sociology; Cold War cultural history; Performance studies; critical race studies; queer studies |
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 | Dr. Guzman studied the behavior of monetary and fiscal policy during economic crises. He showed how fiscal expansions can affect the ability of central banks to use monetary policy against recessions. His work contributes to the understanding of monetary and fiscal policy interactions, and why these policies can exhibit lack of coordination in a crisis. | Doctor of Philosophy in Economics (PhD) |
| 2023 | Dr. Goldman-Hasbun examined perspectives on the free speech and hate speech debate online and on university campuses. She identified complex meaning-making processes and status dynamics, challenging common-sense views of the debate. This research illuminates the importance of examining first-hand perspectives to understand polarized topics. | Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology (PhD) |
| 2023 | Dr. Booker developed novel analyses to better understand how rivers respond to flooding. Using these methods, he demonstrated how river boundaries influence erosion and deposition in the river during floods. This work will help minimise human-related disturbance to riverine ecosystems. | Doctor of Philosophy in Geography (PhD) |
| 2023 | Dr. Brooks examined the relationships between gambling and video games, specifically "loot boxes", a feature where players pay for in-game randomized rewards of varying values. He found that gambling-related cognitions associate with loot box use, and that loot box use also predicts subsequent gambling. These results support regulation of loot boxes. | Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology (PhD) |
| 2023 | Dr. Terpstra differentiated Major Depression and Bipolar Depression using computer-based measures of cognitive-affective processing. He also found that, for individuals who received repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation to treat their depression, cognitive-affective processing predicted future symptoms and improved following treatment. | Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology (PhD) |
| 2023 | Dr. Aday led a program of research investigating how essentialist explanations for gender gaps in interest lead people to create affordances that confirm those beliefs. Their research shed light on a self-fulfilling process that, at scale, drives broader patterns of gendered occupational segregation. | Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology (PhD) |
| 2023 | Dr. Ducharme explored various methods of integrating music composition and music technology. His thesis piece, CMB (Cosmic Microwave Background), leveraged data on the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation of the Universe to create a musical work for chamber sextet, with live electronics and interactive video. | Doctor of Musical Arts in Composition (DMA) |
| 2023 | Dr. Al-Ghorani studied spatiotemporal variations in sediment transport at watershed and channel scales.Though sediment reduction measures focus more on upland soil conservation, she found that local channel conditions should also be considered when mitigating the negative impacts of excess sediment caused by unavoidable climate and landuse changes. | Doctor of Philosophy in Geography (PhD) |
| 2023 | Dr. Moore developed a philosophical account of truth that combines insights from formal semantics and current theories of reference, and then defended his account against rivals that seek to trivialize the philosophy of truth. He subsequently applied his theory to address the question of how thinking in terms of truth can aid philosophical inquiry. | Doctor of Philosophy in Philosophy (PhD) |
| 2023 | Dr. GermAnn did an ethnography in Thailand about a demon. Through this character he discovered how personal relationships to Thai traditions were being renegotiated within a growing generational divide marking the rise of an alternative understanding of the demon and an alternative form of Thai identity resistant to authoritarian structures of power | Doctor of Philosophy in Anthropology (PhD) |