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 |
|---|---|---|
| Valencia Caicedo, Felipe | Vancouver School of Economics | Development Economics; Economic History; Economic Growth; Latin America |
| Van Handel, Leigh | School of Music | |
| Veenstra, Gerry | Department of Sociology | Sociology and social studies of health, health systems and health care; Health equity; social determinants of health; Socioeconomic status and health; racial health inequalities; Bourdieusian field theory, lifestyle practices and health; culture and class; Quantitative Methods |
| Vellutini, Claudio | School of Music | Music; Critical Musicology; Cultural and reception history of nineteenth-century Italian opera; Early 19th century music (opera); Habsburg cultural policies; Historiography; Italian opera in the Habsburg Empire; Performance and staging practices; Vienna opera (first half of 19th century) |
| Vessey, Mark | Department of English Language and Literatures | classical/Christian literary culture in late antiquity; European Renaissance; church fathers (i.e. Augustine, Jerome); Erasmus; bible and book history, Biblical and classical traditions, very early Latin middle ages, intellectual history, 16th century English literature, history of books |
| Victoriano, Ramon Antonio | Department of French, Hispanic & Italian Studies | Caribbean literatures; Latin American literatures; Contemporary literatures; Hispanic Caribbean Literatures and Cultures; Latin American Contemporary Novel and Short Story; Caribbean Literatures |
| Vigna, John | Novels, stories and news; Fiction, Literary Non-Fiction, Creative Writing | |
| Wagner, Katherine | Vancouver School of Economics | Economics; Environmental and Energy Economics; Public Finance |
| Walsh, Shannon | Department of Theatre & Film | Media arts; Critical identity, ethnic and race studies; Social and cultural anthropology; South Africa; Afropessimism & Critical Race Studies; Documentary; Film Production; Indigenous studies; Environmental justice; Affect Theory |
| Wang, Jessica | Department of Geography | US history, 19th and 20th centuries, history of science and medicine, political and intellectual history, social and urban history, US international history |
| Ward, Lawrence | Department of Psychology | Neurosciences, biological and chemical aspects; Neurosciences, medical and physiological and health aspects; Psychology and cognitive sciences; brain plasticity and cultural learning; cognition; cognitive neuroscience of consciousness, perception, memory, spontaneous thought; computational neuroscience of neural oscillations, brain regional networks; effects of noise in the brain; electrophysiology; Neuronal Systems; stochastic processes |
| Weaver, Michael | Department of Political Science | Politics of violence; Ethnic politics and media; Causes and consequences of ethnic violence; Lynching; Legitimacy of state and non-state violence |
| Webster, Crystal | Department of History | African American history, History of early America, African American women & children, Criminalization & incarceration |
| Werker, Janet | Department of Psychology | Neurosciences, biological and chemical aspects; Psychology and cognitive sciences; Bilingualism and Multilingualism; Critical Periods; Language Acquisition; Language Acquisition and Development; Language and Cognitive Processes; Multisensory Processing; Plasticity; Psycholinguistics; Psychology - Biological Aspects; speech perception; Speech and Language Development Disorders |
| Weston, Darlene | Department of Anthropology | Anthropology; Archeological Data Analysis; Bioarchaeology; Biological Anthropology; Osteoarchaeology; Paleodemography; Paleopathology |
| Whiting, Brian | Anthropology, n.e.c.; Geophysics, n.e.c.; Archaeology; Geophysics; GIS; Indigenous studies; Geoscience | |
| Whitney, Valerie | School of Music | Music; French Horn |
| Wilkes, Rima | Department of Sociology | protest, media and First Nations, media and racism, immigration, Collective Action by Indigenous Nations, Media and social movements, Public Opinion, Immigration, Trust |
| Williams, Jennifer | Department of Geography | Population ecology; Evolutionary ecology; Ecological mathematical and statistical models; Population Ecology; Ecological and evolutionary processes |
| Wilson, Tina | School of Social Work | Social work; social work and environment; history and philosophy of social work; critical social theories; generational standpoints; Social justice; social work rhetoric |
| Wilson, Eric | School of Music | Cello |
| Winstanley, Catharine | Department of Psychology | Neurosciences, biological and chemical aspects; Neurosciences, medical and physiological and health aspects; Psychology and cognitive sciences; Addiction; Behavioural neuroscience; decision making; Gambling disorder; Impulsivity; Mental Health and Society; Neuronal Systems; Neuropharmacology; Trauma / Injuries; Traumatic Brain Injury |
| Winthrop-Young, Geoffrey | Department of Central, Eastern & Northern European Studies | German theories of media and cultural techniques, Complexity, biological evolution and animal studies, Secret societies and conspiracy theories, Science Fiction (special focus on Alternate history) |
| Wong, Danielle | Department of English Language and Literatures | Asian American studies; Asian migration studies; Historical and contemporary relationships between race, Empire, and new technologies; Asian North American new media productions and performances |
| Wood, Jasper | School of Music | Violin, chamber music |
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 | Dr. Munawar designed an intersectional and de-colonial Islamic ethic of care by weaving her mother and father's experiences into the stories of Hajar, Yunus, and Maryam in the Islamic tradition. Her findings centre the epistemic authority of disabled Muslims and care-givers as knowers of the 'Islamic' and care-based modes of knowing Islam. | Doctor of Philosophy in Political Science (PhD) |
| 2020 | Dr. Marpeau studied the reception of Madame Bovary by Flaubert over time, according to various interpretive communities. Her research contributes to the field of cultural studies in the sense that it uses interdisciplinary academic approaches to understand a cultural object and its effects on its readers. | Doctor of Philosophy in French (PhD) |
| 2020 | Dr. Brothers investigated Roman spectacles as a medium for dynastic promotion in the Severan age. She discovered that during this tumultuous period, spectacles offered an opportunity for the emperor to demonstrate his benefaction, to create a positive public image for himself, and to associate himself with the great emperors of the past. | Doctor of Philosophy in Classics (PhD) |
| 2020 | Dr. Varao-Sousa examined whether studies of mind wandering in the lab reflect mind wandering in real life. Her research provides evidence that rates of inattention are affected by both the task and the naturalness of the setting, a conclusion which has profound implications for theories of human attention. | Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology (PhD) |
| 2020 | Dr. Patchin examined the cultural and geographical politics of the Zika public health emergency. Her findings show that Zika intervention was deceptive and coercive, with the potential for destructive consequences in environmental and reproductive health. This work contributes to theorizing human reproduction amidst growing ecological uncertainty. | Doctor of Philosophy in Geography (PhD) |
| 2020 | Dr. Vig examined an important literary genre within the Sikh tradition called gurbilas, written in Brajbhasha, and located it within the cultural and religious context of early modern North India (c. 1500-1850). Her research opens up a rich world of shared imaginaries between the Sikhs and other religious communities, as well as cultural worlds. | Doctor of Philosophy in Asian Studies (PhD) |
| 2020 | Dr. Hallenbeck worked in collaboration with Coast Salish and Sahtu Dene storyteller, playwright and fisherman Rosemary Georgeson, to develop a decolonial approach to archival research. The thesis decenters the colonial archive and retells the history of the endurance of Indigenous women's connections to water, fish, and family along the Salish Sea. | Doctor of Philosophy in Geography (PhD) |
| 2020 | Dr. Ransom examined the nature of perceptual learning for expertise, arguing that it is best understood as involving a change in the contents of perceptual experience itself, rather than simply the sorts of inferences experts are able to make. This has an impact on real-world training programs in fields from medicine to military to art criticism. | Doctor of Philosophy in Philosophy (PhD) |
| 2020 | Dr. Turgeon-Solis studied Eighteenth Century authors' fascination with the figure of the nun. Her research sheds new light on a social imagination that was prevalent in the Eighteenth Century, and is an original contribution to the study of the representation of women in literature. | Doctor of Philosophy in French (PhD) |
| 2020 | Dr. Johal's research seeks to understand how shame and stigma have shaped women's participation in Punjabi theatre, and to analyze the factors that can enable female participation and success in the face of constraint. Her research focused on the life stories of four women who have made significant contributions to Punjabi theatre. | Doctor of Philosophy in Asian Studies (PhD) |