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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 |
|---|---|---|
| Valadares, Desiree | Department of Geography | Landscape architecture; Environment, space and place; Media, visual and digital culture; Social and cultural geography; heritage politics and preservation; Asian North American history; war memory and war commemoration; cultural landscapes and architectural history |
| Van Handel, Leigh | School of Music | |
| Veenstra, Gerry | Department of Sociology | Sociology and social studies of health, health systems and health care; Health equity; Sociology, n.e.c.; social determinants of health; Socioeconomic status and health; racial health inequalities; Bourdieusian field theory, lifestyle practices and health; culture and class; Quantitative Methods; Sociology of soccer |
| Vellutini, Claudio | School of Music | Opera; 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); 19th-century opera singers; Opera and mobility studies; Opera's global dissemination in the 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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; Computational neuroscience; 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 |
| Woody, Sheila | Department of Psychology | Psychology and cognitive sciences; Mental Health and Society; Anxiety; cognition; Community Health / Public Health; Specific Social Services (Clientele); Hoarding |
| Wright, Matthew | Department of Political Science | Political science; American politics; Comparitive politics; immigration; Immigration Policy; migration; National identity; Political behaviour; Political psychology; public opinion |
| Wu, Helena | Department of Asian Studies | Critical identity, ethnic and race studies; Media, visual and digital culture; Critical film studies; Theories of cultural studies; Globalization and culture; Other cultural studies, n.e.c.; Hong Kong cinema, literature and culture; Asian screen cultures; Media narratives; Creative industry and spectatorship; Identity and cultural flows; critical theory; postcolonialism; Thing theory |
| Wylie, Alison | Department of Philosophy | Philosophy; feminist philosophy; philosophy of archaeology; philosophy of science; philosophy of the social and historial sciences; Philosophy, History and Comparative Studies; research ethics (non-medical); science 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. Skeeter investigated how greenhouse gases move into and out of two Arctic ecosystems with permafrost soils in the Mackenzie Delta Region using field observations and machine learning models | Doctor of Philosophy in Geography (PhD) |
| 2023 | Dr. Perez Montelongo studied South African photography since the 1960s, with a focus on black and white analog technologies. She investigated photographic practices that put a question mark on colonial ideas about the genre of landscape photography, both in South Africa and beyond. Her dissertation expanded the scope of the history of photography. | Doctor of Philosophy in Art History (PhD) |
| 2023 | Dr. Pecanha analyzes the effects of a public policy that decreased violence in poor neighborhoods in the city of Rio de Janeiro on learning gains, formal employment and incarceration. He also discusses the impacts of localized temperature shocks on mortality. His research illuminates the role of urban policies in dealing with urban issues. | Doctor of Philosophy in Economics (PhD) |
| 2023 | Dr. Jones studied how transit-oriented development (TOD), increased redevelopment pressure on clusters of Vancouver's aging suburban rental housing. He critiqued the logic of TOD to argue against suburban gentrification and the displacement of marginalized renters. Dr. Jones found that these processes could be ameliorated by City Council leadership. | Doctor of Philosophy in Geography (PhD) |
| 2023 | Dr. Tulloch examined the way young people used Internet memes to process and communicate information in their daily lives. Her research highlights the importance of humour to their memetic storytelling and the implications it holds for digital citizenship education. Laughter,she argues, helps people negotiate the different values memes instantiate. | Doctor of Philosophy in Library, Archival and Information Studies (PhD) |
| 2023 | Dr. McDowell examined how downstream differences in river characteristics cause differences in river response to floods, including topographic changes and sediment transport rates. | Doctor of Philosophy in Geography (PhD) |
| 2023 | Dr. Collins demonstrated how the Japanese new religion Shinnyo-en is shaped by sacred stories about its founders. He found that members form emotional bonds with one another, the founders, and the organization by intertwining the founders' narratives with their own lives and with elements of Japanese Buddhist ritual, objects, spaces, and art. | Doctor of Philosophy in Asian Studies (PhD) |
| 2023 | Dr. Bergen examined landscapes and buildings in medieval and Renaissance allegories. These understudied natural and built environments present a paradigm for metaphor that is as important as personification for this literary genre, and stand at the heart of medieval and early modern thought and writing on space, time, memory, and the individual. | Doctor of Philosophy in English (PhD) |
| 2023 | Dr. Forrest researched the origins and development of a real-time urban traffic control system in Los Angeles, California. Through this case study, he sheds light on how both the material and cultural aspects of a municipal organization shape the city-wide implementation of digital infrastructures. | Doctor of Philosophy in Geography (PhD) |
| 2023 | Is there a pattern to one of humankind's greatest and apparently random natural hazards? Dr. Adams captured order and self-organisation amongst chaotic behaviour in mountain rivers. His experiments reveal that as rivers become more hazardous they also become more predictable and ordered, which provides opportunities for managing them. | Doctor of Philosophy in Geography (PhD) |