Photo: Martin Dee
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Simchen, Ori | Department of Philosophy | Philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, philosophy of law |
| Sin, Nancy | Department of Psychology | Psychology and cognitive sciences; social determinants of health; stress; Social Aspects of Aging; Health Promotion; Lifestyle Determinants and Health; Adult development and aging; cardiovascular disease; depression; Emotions; Health behaviours; Stress processes; Well-being |
| Sinnamon, Luanne Silvia | School of Information | Archival, repository and related studies; Library science and information studies; human information interaction; Information Systems; information retrieval; New Technology and Social Impacts |
| Siu, Henry | Vancouver School of Economics | business cycle, recession, unemployment, Business cycles and the consequences of macroeconomic forces on the labour market |
| Slingerland, Edward | Department of Philosophy | Asian Studies, Chinese philosophy, philosophy, religion, religion and conflict, secularism, spontaneity, ethics, science-humanities integration, interdisciplinarity, interdisciplinary research, Chinese thought, religious studies (comparative religion, cognitive science and evolution of religion), cognitive linguistics (blending and conceptual metaphor theory), ethics (virtue ethics, moral psychology), evolutionary psychology, the relationship between the humanities and the natural sciences, and the classical Chinese language |
| Smilges, Logan | Department of English Language and Literatures | |
| Smith, Tai | Department of Art History, Visual Art & Theory | History of art and architecture; Art theory and analysis; Visual theory, visual culture and visual literacy; Arts and Technologies; Economical Contexts; Gender; media theory; Modern and Contemporary Art and Design; Politics of Media and Mediation; Textiles |
| Snowberg, Erik | Vancouver School of Economics | Political economy; Behavioural Economics; Experimental Design; Data-Intensive Methods in Economics |
| Snyder, Jason | Department of Psychology | plasticity, learning, memory, stress, mental health, emotional behaviour |
| Solimine, Philip | Industry economics and industrial organization; Econometrics; Data-driven estimation, optimization, and control; Collaborative and social computing; Experimental economics | |
| Soma, Kiran | Department of Psychology | Neurosciences, biological and chemical aspects; Neurosciences, medical and physiological and health aspects; Psychology and cognitive sciences; Zoology; Behavior; Biological Behavior; Endocrinology; Neuroendocrine Diseases; Neuronal Communication and Neurotransmission; Neuronal Systems; neuroscience; stress |
| Song, Kyungchul | Vancouver School of Economics | Estimation of structural models based on interactions among economic agents |
| Soskuthy, Marton | Department of Linguistics | language change; Computational modeling; Statistics; Phonetics; Cognitive systems |
| Speller, Camilla | Department of Anthropology | Anthropology; Archeological Data Analysis; Molecular Genetics; Ancient DNA Analysis (paleogenetics); Ancient proteins (paleoproteomics); Animal Domestication; Bioarchaeology; Environmental Archaeology; Marine Ecosystems |
| Squires, Munir | Vancouver School of Economics | Development Economics, Firms and Productivity |
| Sriram, Veena | School of Public Policy and Global Affairs, School of Population and Public Health | Social sciences; Global health policy; Politics of policy processes; South Asian Studies; Governance; Health workers; power |
| Stainton, Timothy | School of Social Work | Developmental Disability, Disability, Social Policy, History of Developmental Disability, Philosophy of Welfare |
| Starling, Dan | Department of Art History, Visual Art & Theory | |
| Stecklov, Guy | Department of Sociology | Family and household demographic studies; Fertility; Migration; Mortality; Demography; Studies of Canadian society; Demographic behavior; Historical social change; Demographic Change in Sub-Saharan Africa; Migration and assimilation; Population and Development; Research and survey methodology |
| Stephens, Christopher | Department of Philosophy | Philosophy; philosophy of biology; philosophy of science; rationality; scientific philosophy; Why be rational? |
| Stickles, Elise | Department of English Language and Literatures | English language; Mental Representation; grammar; Pragmatics; Semantics; Syntax; Imagery; Symbolism; Gestural, Verbal Communications; Public Communication; Data mining |
| Stratton, James | Department of English Language and Literatures | Linguistics; historical linguistics; Language variation and change |
| Sultan, Nazmul | Department of Political Science | Political science; history of political thought; empire and anticolonial thought; popular sovereignty; modern conceptions of the global |
| Sunar, Kiran | Department of Asian Studies | literature, religion, and culture in Punjab |
| Sundberg, Juanita | Department of Geography | Militarization and Everyday Life in the US-Mexico Borderlands, environmental dimensions of US's border security policies in the Mexican border |
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 |
|---|---|---|
| 2020 | Close individuals tend to show synchronized ups and downs of stress hormones such as cortisol. Dr. Pauly examined interconnections in cortisol levels in older couples' daily lives. Her findings help us understand the everyday dynamics that contribute to health being linked in older couples. | Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology (PhD) |
| 2020 | How does one archive the immaterial, the absent, the inaccessible after times of crisis? How does one make visible the disappeared? Dr. O'Brien investigated the work of Lebanese and Palestinian artists who, after the 1975-1990 Civil War in Lebanon, in which 17,000 people were deemed disappeared, make visible these populations and their histories. | Doctor of Philosophy in Art History (PhD) |
| 2020 | Dr. Choi investigated speech perception in preverbal infants. Her behavioural and neuroimaging research demonstrated that infants integrate information from their articulatory movements during speech perception. These studies advance understandings of how infants may acquire speech, the complex perceptual and motoric skill essential for language. | Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology (PhD) |
| 2020 | Dr. Wei studied how mortgage market fluctuations in the early 2000's affected long-term labor market outcomes in the US. Her work also investigated the impact of tax incentives on small business growth. These findings have policy implications for labor market recoveries after a financial crisis and the promotion of small businesses. | Doctor of Philosophy in Economics (PhD) |
| 2020 | Dr. Lee used novel techniques and various modelling approaches to evaluate impacts of nitrogen fertilization at a coastal forest and provide better estimates of photosynthesis and respiration. These results help us understand more about the role of temperate forests in climate change mitigation. | Doctor of Philosophy in Geography (PhD) |
| 2020 | Dr. O'Regan explored the notion of community in literature of the Hispanic Caribbean diasporas, focusing on authors who write communities that escape classification. No longer identifying by race, culture, class, gender, or sexuality, these collectivities privilege difference over identity for a creative relationality. | Doctor of Philosophy in Hispanic Studies (PhD) |
| 2020 | Dr. Park found that parents' flexible thinking and problem solving skills are important in reducing the association between the experience of chronic stress and harsh parenting. Given that stress is such a common experience for parents, her study provides important implications for parenting interventions to support healthy child development. | Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology (PhD) |
| 2020 | Dr. Wynes examined how individual actions can be optimized to reduce the greenhouse gases that warm our planet. His interdisciplinary research included analysis of political and lifestyle choices. This study demonstrates that societal elites and motivated members of the public may be missing opportunities to fight climate change more effectively. | Doctor of Philosophy in Geography (PhD) |
| 2020 | Dr. Mitra studied how the decline in labour union power led productivity to rise during recessions since the early 1980s in the US. His work also established a limited role for parents in determining income and consumption inequality among children. These findings have policy implications for temporary job-guarantee in recession and bequest tax. | Doctor of Philosophy in Economics (PhD) |
| 2020 | Dr. Ho studied the link between physical activity and cognitive function. His research showed that physical activity is associated with improved performance on tasks such as university exams. He also developed a novel way to measure physical activity outdoors. These results have implications for the promotion and measurement of physical activity. | Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology (PhD) |