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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 |
|---|---|---|
| Sultan, Nazmul | Department of Political Science | Political science; history of political thought; empire and anticolonial thought; popular sovereignty; modern conceptions of the global |
| 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 |
| Sundstrom, Lisa | Department of Political Science | nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), global activism, human rights, Democratization, authoritarianism, civil society, Russian/ post-Communist politics, Western aid, and NGOs in global politics |
| Svendsen, Linda | School of Creative Writing | Script development; Novels, stories and news; Writing for Television; Fiction |
| Szabo, Krisztina | School of Music | |
| Szkup, Michal | Vancouver School of Economics | international macroeconomics, financial economics and information economics with a particular focus on the role of coordination failures and financial frictions. |
| Taylor, Robert | School of Music | Music, Concert Band, Wind Ensemble, Music Education, Conducting, Instrumental conducting, brass instruments |
| Taylor, Timothy | School of Creative Writing | fiction and nonfiction |
| Te Punga Somerville, Alice | Department of English Language and Literatures, Institute for Critical Indigenous Studies | Indigenous Literary And Cultural Studies |
| Tenenboim, Ori | School of Journalism, Writing, and Media | |
| Tenzer, Michael | School of Music | Music Cultures of the World, Rhythm, Music and Human Evolution, Music and Cultural Critique, Jazz, Indonesian Music, Contemporary Art Music, Performance, composition, promoting interest in the world's finest musics |
| Tessier, Anne-Michelle | Department of Linguistics | Linguistic structures (including grammar, phonology, lexicon and semantics); Constraint-based grammars; Phonological acquisition; L2 production and perception in childhood; Lexical avoidance; Phonological theories; Shitgibbons |
| Testa, Carlo | Department of French, Hispanic & Italian Studies | Italian literature, history of cinema, theory/film studies |
| Thauberger, Althea | Department of Art History, Visual Art & Theory | Art history and theory; Curatorial and related studies; Visual arts and media arts; Biopolitics and institutional critique/reform; Media philosophy; Photographic history/theory; Settler decolonization, and site-based art and activism |
| Thobani, Sunera | Department of Asian Studies | Critical race, postcolonial and feminist theory |
| Thompson, Evan | Department of Philosophy | Philosophy; Asian Philosophies; Cognitive Science; Phenomenology; Philosophical Foundations; Philosophy of Mind; Philosophy, History and Comparative Studies; Theories and Philosophies |
| Thrush, Coll | Department of History | Indigenous history; settler colonialism; Pacific history; Northwest Coast |
| Tiberghien, Yves | Department of Political Science | Political science; global politics |
| Tindall, David | Department of Sociology | environmental movement, social movements, environmental protest, social protest, social networks, social aspects of climate change, Aboriginal protest about natural resources and environmental issues, social surveys, polling, environmental politics, environmental attitudes, environmental values, opinion about the environment, protest about pipelines, protest about oil sands, protest about tar sands, wilderness, wilderness preservation, use of social media in social protest, use of social media in social movements, social media and social networks, social aspects of forestry, climate change policy, news media, social psychology of environmental issues, Envionmental sociology, social research methods, aboriginal forestry, social science |
| Todd, Rebecca | Department of Psychology | Cognitive sciences, n.e.c.; Neurocognitive patterns and neural networks; Neurosciences, medical and health and physiological aspects, n.e.c.; Human Cognition and Emotion; Neurophenomenology and participatory sensemaking; Dance as a laboratory for interactive cognition; cognition; Emotional learning; Human Neurocognitive processes underlying all of the above; Learning and Memory; Motivation, Emotions and Rewards |
| Tomc, Sandra | Department of English Language and Literatures | Nineteenth-century US literature, twentieth- century US entertainment and film, gothic literature and film, screenwriting, affect and psychoanalytic theory, fear and horror, film and image theory |
| Tracy, Jessica | Department of Psychology | emotion, self-conscious emotions (pride, Emotion, nonverbal expression, self-conscious emotions (eg, pride, shame), the self, self-esteem, narcissism, trends in psychological science |
| Turin, Mark | Institute for Critical Indigenous Studies, Department of Anthropology | Anthropology; Cultural Institutions (Museums, Libraries, etc.); Lexicography and Dictionaries; Language Contact and Linguistic Changes; Language Rights and Policies; Language Interactions; Political Culture, Society and Ideology; Bella Bella; Bhutan; First Nations; Heiltsuk; Indigeneity; Nepal; Sikkim; Tibet |
| Turner, Hannah | School of Information | Archival, repository and related studies; Library science and information studies; cataloguing and classification; Cultural Institutions (Museums, Libraries, etc.); Impacts of New Information Technologies; information practice; museum anthropology; Science and technology studies |
| Tworek, Heidi | Department of History, School of Public Policy and Global Affairs | Historical studies; Europe; Germany; history of media and communications; international organizations; international relations; Philosophy, History and Comparative 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 |
|---|---|---|
| 2022 | Dr. Johnson's research examined the political economy of the American blood plasma industry. Following the history of this economy from plantation prisons in the US south to the opening of new plasma centers in the contemporary suburbs, her work reveals how relations of race and inequality shape this increasingly significant economy. | Doctor of Philosophy in Geography (PhD) |
| 2022 | Dr. Bhardwaj studied how a cosmopolitan community of progressive South Asian Canadian labour cultural activists contested cultural hegemony in British Columbia in the 1980s. He records and reinterprets a unique phase of intercommunity cultural solidarity that succeeded in producing a forceful critique against gender inequality. | Doctor of Philosophy in Asian Studies (PhD) |
| 2022 | Dr. Johnson developed a new bilingual speech data set and demonstrated a high degree of similarity in voice and sound categories for Cantonese and English. Her research offers insight into the nature of bilingual speech and furthers our understanding of how language interacts with the mind. | Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics (PhD) |
| 2022 | Dr. Roes studied the brain networks measurable through fMRI. Using a new analysis method, Spatiotemporal fMRI-CPCA, she showed that resting state networks did not adequately account for task-based activity. She argues that task-based networks provide unique information about brain-cognition relations not available from resting state data alone. | Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology (PhD) |
| 2022 | Dr. Werner studied the origin of the orca in popular and scientific discourses. His research highlights the importance of first-hand encounters in shaping the historical representation of the killer whale (1861-1964). This study showcases the possibilities for animal-centered history in the age of mass digitization of historical source material. | Doctor of Philosophy in History (PhD) |
| 2022 | Dr. Howe studied climate change policy networks, discourse, and policy influence in Canada. Research and environmental actors were important in some policy spheres, but not seen as influential. For some environmental actors, media coverage made them seem less influential. Also, policy beliefs and network ties both explained collaboration behaviour. | Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology (PhD) |
| 2022 | Dr. Yang examined how carbon is made governable in the urban settings by investigating the discursive elements, the formal and informal structures and norms of the policy processes. This research highlights the particular narratives, governance logics and social practices used in the mobilization of climate policy. | Doctor of Philosophy in Geography (PhD) |
| 2022 | Dr. TeBokkel explains how British Romantic poetry was influenced by agricultural improvement and, in turn, informed the capitalist agriculture. As a result, modern farming practice, labour, technology, management, research, and legislation still rely on Romantic tropes and genres. | Doctor of Philosophy in English (PhD) |
| 2022 | Dr. Berseth examined how genomic science is being used to conserve wild Pacific salmon. She found that decision-makers weigh different aspects of wildness in determining where and how to intervene using novel technologies. This work helps us understand the changing meaning of wildness in the Anthropocene. | Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology (PhD) |
| 2022 | Dr. Stecy-Hildebrandt examined how blue and white collar workplaces shape fathers' involvement in child care. Both types of organizations were found to limit fathers' caregiving, but in different ways, highlighting the importance of understanding specific workplace contexts and their implications for reinforcing the gendered division of labour. | Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology (PhD) |