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 |
|---|---|---|
| Cameron, Maxwell | Department of Political Science | Political science; Political Regimes (Democracy, Monarchy, Federalism, Parliamentarism, etc.); Social Organization and Political Systems; Comparative Politics; Democratization; Latin America; Practical wisdom |
| Caragata, Lea | School of Social Work | Social oppression and marginalization; Counselling, welfare and community services; Social policy; welfare systems; Poverty; labour markets; lone mothers; social policy; youth provisioning |
| Carrabre, T. Patrick | School of Music | Music; construction of identity; creation of shared musical spaces with indigenous and non-western musicians; decolonization; use of interactive electronics |
| Casas Aguilar, Anna | Department of French, Hispanic & Italian Studies | Arts, Literature and Subjectivity; Arts and Cultural Traditions; Spanish Cultural Studies; Catalan Literature and Culture; Gender Studies; Masculinities; Feminisms; Self-writing; Hispanic Cinemas |
| Castonguay-Belanger, Joel | Department of French, Hispanic & Italian Studies | French language; History of the book and print culture; Québec literature and culture; Science and literature; The Enlightenment and the French Revolution |
| Catungal, John Paul | Institute for Gender, Race, Sex and Social Justice | queer of colour geographies, critical race and ethnic studies, diaspora and transnationalism, critical pedagogy, the scholarship of teaching and learning, and the lived geographies of sexual and racial minorities in educational spaces |
| Cavell, Richard Anthony | Department of English Language and Literatures | English language; Media and Society; Media Influence on Behavior; Media Types (Radio, Television, Written Press, etc.); media studies; media theory |
| Chang, Dorothy | School of Music | Composition |
| Chapman, Mary Ann | Department of English Language and Literatures | Arts and Cultural Traditions; Arts and Literary Policies; Arts and Technologies; Arts, Literature and Subjectivity; Social Determinants of Arts and Letters; Artistic and Literary Marginality; Artistic and Cultural Heritage; Artist or Author Social Identity; Artistic and Literary Movements, Schools and Styles; Artistic and Literary Theories; Literary or Artistic Work Analysis; Literary or Artistic Work Dissemination or Reception Contexts; Literary or Artistic Works Analysis; Writing and Literary Experimentation; Poetry; Novel and Short Story; Essays; Gender Relationship; Audiences and Mass Media; Media and Democratization; Media and Society; Media Influence on Behavior; Civil and Social Responsibilities of Media; Stereotypes; Electoral System; Printing Art; Persuasion Strategies; Social Movements; Publics; Performance and Theatrical Productions; Social Networks; American Literature; Asian American Literature; Asian Canadian Literature; Suffrage; Public Pedagogy of the Arts; Public Humanities |
| Charles, Grant | School of Social Work | Psychosocial oncology, intellectual disabilities, family interventions and at risk youth |
| Chaudhry, Ayesha | Institute for Gender, Race, Sex and Social Justice | Islam, Muslims, religion, gender, human rights, family and children, discrimination, social justice |
| Cheek, Timothy | School of Public Policy and Global Affairs, Department of History | 20th century Chinese history, the history of the Chinese communist party, the role of intellectuals in public life in China |
| Chen, Jinhua | Department of Asian Studies | East Asian state-church relationships, monastic (hagio/)biographical literature, Buddhist sacred sites, relic veneration, Buddhism and technological innovation in medieval China, and Buddhist translations |
| Chen, Frances | Department of Psychology | Health psychology; social connection; social support; stress; coping; conflict and negotiation; hormones; Neuroendocrinology |
| Cheong, Amanda | Department of Sociology | Sociology; migration; Citizenship and Legal Status; Statelessness |
| Childress, Clayton | Department of Sociology | Cultural Production, Reception, and Meaning Making, Taste, Decision Making, Inequality, Organizations, Markets |
| Chiu-Duke, Josephine | Department of Asian Studies | Asian history; History of Major Eras, Great Civilisations or Geographical Corpuses; Chinese and Taiwanese history; liberal democracy; political thought and institutions |
| Chowdhury, Arjun | Department of Political Science | Failed states, intervention, civil war, autocrats, revolution. |
| Christoff, Kalina | Department of Psychology | brain, cognitive neuroscience, psychology, prefronal cortex, fMRI, neuroimaging, neuropsychology, executive functions, problem solving, reasoning, thinking, mind-wandering, attention, consciousness, real-time fMRI, trauma and PTSD, Cognitive and neural basis of human thought, reasoning and problem solving |
| Christopoulos, John | Department of History | Historical studies; Early modern Europe; History of pre-modern medicine; Social and cultural history of early modern Italy |
| Clark, Luke | Department of Psychology | Gambling, Problem Gambling, Addiction, Decision-Making, Reward, Cognitive Neuroscience, Cognitive and neurobiological mechanisms involved in gambling behaviour and disordered gambling |
| Claxton, Dana | Department of Art History, Visual Art & Theory | film, video, photography, single- and multi-channel video installation, and performance art |
| Coleman, Katharina Pichler | Department of Political Science | International organizations, international relations, international security/peace operations, interntional rules, noms and legitimacy, sun-Saharan Africa |
| Cookson, Tara | School of Public Policy and Global Affairs | Public policy; Development; Social protection; Care work; Gender equality |
| Cooper, Elisabeth | Department of Ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern Studies | Archaeology of greater Mesopotamia |
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. 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) |
| 2023 | Dr. Sadaka wrote The Book of Ice, a musical composition for flute solo and chamber orchestra, which responds to The White Book, a novel written by the South Korean writer Han Kang. This piece blends pitch-set theoretical techniques and a spectral attitude to orchestration, and it develops original ways of combining music and text. | Doctor of Musical Arts in Composition (DMA) |
| 2023 | Dr. Klaiber studied the minor uplifting events that occur frequently in daily life. He showed how the lifespan developmental context and personality differences are linked to how many of these positive events people experience and how they respond to them. | Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology (PhD) |
| 2023 | Dr. Wadden examined the bioethical implications of using artificial intelligence and machine learning in healthcare decision-making, specifically focusing on advanced diagnostic systems. He demonstrated how these systems entail new obligations for clinicians toward their patients and how they may impact a patient's ability to consent to treatment. | Doctor of Philosophy in Philosophy (PhD) |
| 2023 | Dr. Glass studied stories of human encounters with the divine in ancient Jewish, Christian, and pagan literature, often called epiphanies. This comparative research illustrated shared beliefs in how and why the gods intervened in human life, and contributes to our understanding of intercultural relations in the ancient Mediterranean. | Doctor of Philosophy in Religious Studies (PhD) |
| 2023 | American Indians have the highest rates of early school leaving but are often left out of data. Working with the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community, Dr. Keegahn examines this omission through Indigenous education and data sovereignty. Her research reveals the ongoing erasure of American Indians and ways the Swinomish have sought to address this. | Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology (PhD) |
| 2023 | Dr. Stensrud studied the function of hypocrisy accusations in the U.S. slavery debates, tracing this rhetoric's influence on nineteenth-century writers. He demonstrates that authors incorporated anti-slavery invective in their work to translate political economic analysis into a moral vocabulary capable of mobilizing the public against slavery. | Doctor of Philosophy in English (PhD) |
