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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 |
|---|---|---|
| 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, Timothy | School of Creative Writing | fiction and nonfiction |
| Taylor, Robert | School of Music | Music, Concert Band, Wind Ensemble, Music Education, Conducting, Instrumental conducting, brass instruments |
| 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 |
| Usher, Camille | Department of Art History, Visual Art & Theory | Art theory and analysis; Contemporary art; Indigenous visual culture; curatorial practices; Museum studies; feminism and performance; public art and graffiti |
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. Diabo studied the politics of listening in Mohawk and other First Peoples' literatures. Taking the Haudenosaunee Great Law of Peace as a blueprint, their research theorizes what it means to listen politically in both First Peoples and settler-colonial contexts. | Doctor of Philosophy in English (PhD) |
| 2023 | Dr. Gemaliel Vimala's research using food prices in India showed that when people use physical cash for transactions, prices are usually set in round digits and they change less often. In an online setting, such bunching reduces and prices change more frequently. This brings out the policy implication of increased flexibility of prices in a cashless world. | Doctor of Philosophy in Economics (PhD) |
| 2023 | Dr. Lok studied whether people avoid talking to strangers because they underestimate other people's willingness to connect. Her work led to the development of an actionable framework that outlines the conditions that need to be met before strangers decide to engage with each other. | Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology (PhD) |
| 2023 | Dr. Castaneda studied narratives and aesthetics in 21st century Colombian films that challenged the longstanding invisibility of Afro-Colombian subjects. Her analysis helps in increasing awareness of anti-racist trends and the struggle to democratize the film representation regime in which the White/Mestizo aesthetics remains dominant. | Doctor of Philosophy in Hispanic Studies (PhD) |
| 2023 | Dr. Fabris' dissertation focused on the Piikani Nation's attempts to challenge the construction of the Oldman River Dam in the 1980s/1990s. His research findings draw attention to the continued limits of reconciling Indigenous law with Canadian law without addressing the implications of Indigenous jurisdiction. | Doctor of Philosophy in Geography (PhD) |
| 2023 | In languages, meaningful words and signs consist of meaningless units, or phonemes. Dr. Tkachman shows how phonemes could emerge from embodied motivations in language evolution. Her research brings together linguistics and cognitive science and demonstrates profound consequences of embodiment in communication and cognition. | Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics (PhD) |
| 2023 | Dr. Zimmermann reviewed how modern German-language literature challenges views of refugees as problems that threaten European liberal nation-states. Texts can illustrate that neither European citizens nor refugees are permanent outsiders or insiders to a place. The findings are relevant for literary discourses on the categorization of migrants. | Doctor of Philosophy in Germanic Studies (PhD) |
| 2023 | Dr. Cheng studied the social construction of personal identity. | Doctor of Philosophy in Philosophy (PhD) |
| 2023 | Dr. Maslany investigated how affective valence influences visual attention scope. She examined the theory that positive valence broadens attention scope, and negative valence narrows it. In 5 experiments, she found no evidence for the theory. Thus, she proposed limits under which the influence of valence on visual attention scope does not occur. | Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology (PhD) |
| 2023 | Dr. Cooke studied the practice of oboists giving the tuning-A in historical and contemporary orchestras. She found that oboists see tuning as not only a practical tool, but as a musical solo which can inspire other musical works like John Corigliano's Concerto. This research illuminates the history and beauty of an often-overlooked tradition. | Doctor of Musical Arts in Orchestral Instrument (DMA) |