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The Faculty of Arts at UBC brings together the best of quantitative research, humanistic inquiry, and artistic expression to advance a better world. Graduate students in the Faculty of Arts create and disseminate knowledge in the Humanities, Social Sciences, and the Creative and Performing Arts through teaching, research, professional practice, artistic production, and performance.

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.

 

Research Facilities

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.
 

Research Highlights

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.

Graduate Degree Programs

Research Supervisors in Faculty

or browse the list of faculty members in various academic units. You may click each unit to view faculty members appointed in that unit. View the full faculty member directory for more search and filter options.
Name Academic Unit(s) Research Interests
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
Copeland, Brian Vancouver School of Economics International trade, environmental economics, interaction between globalization, the environment, and the sustainability of renewable resources
Corrigall-Brown, Catherine Department of Sociology Sociology; social movements; identity; political sociology; social psychology
Coulthard, Lisa Department of Theatre & Film film theory and violence; film sound and violence, contemporary American and European cinemas, continental philosophy and Lacanian theory
Coulthard, Glen Institute for Critical Indigenous Studies, Department of Political Science First Nations politics – national; political theory
Creighton, Millie Department of Anthropology Japan, Japanese descent communities (Nikkei or Nikkeijin), Korea, Inter-Asian Relations, Identity, Consumerism, Popular and Mass Culture, Gender, Minorities, Work and Leisure
Crowston, Clare Department of History history of early modern France, history of labor, women and gender, material culture, economic exchange, and fashion
Cutler, Frederick Department of Political Science Social movements and democracy; public opinion; Political Methodology; Canadian Politics; Elections; Electoral Systems; Federalism; Academic Publishing Systems
Dadugblor, Stephen School of Journalism, Writing, and Media English language; Rhetoric; Digital media/social media; democratic deliberation; decoloniality; writing studies; African Studies
Dalziel, Pamela Department of English Language and Literatures Victorian-literature, Victorian-culture, visual-representation, illustration, gender-studies, religion, interdisciplinary-studies, textual-criticism, scholarly-editing, Thomas-Hardy, Charles-Dickens, George-Eliot
Dancygier, Barbara Department of English Language and Literatures Linguistics, grammar
Daniels, Megan Department of Ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern Studies Classical religion; Archaeology of Greece and the broader eastern Mediterranean; Late Bronze Age to Hellenistic Period; Ancient religion, sanctuaries, votive objects; Cross-cultural interaction; Ancient economies and trade; Divine kingship; Digital/data science approaches to the ancient world, particularly ancient religion; Migration and mobility across Eurasia; Phoenician culture; Ceramic analysis
Dauvergne, Peter Department of Political Science Social sciences; international relations; global environmental politics; sustainability governance; global South; Developing countries; transnational corporations; technology; consumption; Plastic Pollution; social movements; environmentalism; activism; deforestation
Davis, Ryan School of Music Strings
Davis, Henry Thomas Department of Linguistics First Nations languages
Dawson, Samantha Department of Psychology Psychology and cognitive sciences; Interventions for sexual dysfunction; Sexual function and dysfunction in individuals and couples
De Angelis, Franco Department of Ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern Studies Ancient Greek world history, environment, urbanism, developmnet of societies, colonization, economics, ancient literature
de Villiers, Jessica Department of English Language and Literatures Linguistics
Dechaine, Rose-Marie Department of Linguistics Native American languages; Algonquian language family, Cree, Blackfoot, Ojibwe; French / English bilingualism policy; formal linguistics; generative grammar (Chomsky); West African languages (Niger-Congo, Yoruba, Igbo, Edo); Nigerian languages; literacy vs. oralcy; language planning re: French, Indigenous languages, Speech/gesture coordination, syntactic interface relations
Deer, Glenn Department of English Language and Literatures discourse studies, the rhetoric of power in narrative fiction, and postmodernism and Canadian Literature
DeLongis, Anita Department of Psychology Psychology and cognitive sciences; social determinants of health; chronic illness; coping; couples; families; health; Health Psychology; marriage; social support; stress
Dempsey, Jessica Department of Geography wrestle with the theoretical and historical-geographical complexities of environmental politics as it shapes and is shaped by the entanglement of state, economy, science, and culture
Devereux, Michael Vancouver School of Economics Economics, Macro and Monetary Economics Economic Policy, Monetary and Fiscal Policy, Deficits, Exchange Rates, Capital Flows, Financial Crises, International, monetary
Dick, Alexander Department of English Language and Literatures Literary or Artistic Work Analysis; Philosophy, History and Comparative Studies; Artistic and Literary Theories; Arts, Literature and Subjectivity; British Romanticism; Scottish Enlightenment; Literature and Economics; Literature and the Environment; Literature and Science; Scottish Literature

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Recent Publications

This is an incomplete sample of recent publications in chronological order by UBC faculty members with a primary appointment in the Faculty of Arts.

 

Publication: Global Biogeochemical Cycles
UBC Author(s): McKenzie Kuhn (Geography / Faculty of Arts)
ISSN: 08866236
Volume: 38
Publication Date: October 2024

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Publication: Mobile Pastoralist Households: Archaeological and Ethnoarchaeological Perspectives
UBC Author(s): Aleksa Alaica (Anthropology / Faculty of Arts)
Page Range: 255-274
Publication Date: 1 October 2024

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Publication: Psychosomatic Medicine
UBC Author(s): Anita DeLongis (Psychology / Faculty of Arts), Nancy Sin (Psychology / Faculty of Arts)
ISSN: 00333174
Volume: 86
Page Range: 681-689
Publication Date: 1 October 2024

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Publication: Stress and Health
UBC Author(s): Anita DeLongis (Psychology / Faculty of Arts), Nancy Sin (Psychology / Faculty of Arts)
ISSN: 15323005
Volume: 40
Publication Date: October 2024

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Publication: Journal of Geophysical Research: Earth Surface
UBC Author(s): Marwan Hassan (Geography / Faculty of Arts)
ISSN: 21699003
Volume: 129
Publication Date: October 2024

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Publication: Proceedings of the Association for Information Science and Technology
UBC Author(s): Victoria Lemieux (School of Information / Faculty of Arts)
Volume: 61
Page Range: 774-779
Publication Date: October 2024

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Publication: Cultural Heritage and the Literary Archive: Objects, Institutions, and Practices between the Analogue and the Digital
UBC Author(s): Jennifer Douglas (School of Information / Faculty of Arts)
Page Range: 168-187
Publication Date: 30 September 2024

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Publication: BMC neurology
UBC Author(s): Noah Silverberg (Psychology / Faculty of Arts)
Volume: 24
Page Range: 363
Publication Date: 28 September 2024

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Publication: Journal of Documentation
UBC Author(s): Hannah Turner (School of Information / Faculty of Arts)
ISSN: 00220418
Volume: 80
Page Range: 1419-1441
Publication Date: 25 September 2024

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Publication: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
UBC Author(s): Marwan Hassan (Geography / Faculty of Arts)
Volume: 121
Publication Date: 17 September 2024

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Publication: BMJ open
UBC Author(s): Lindsey Richardson (Sociology / Faculty of Arts)
Volume: 14
Page Range: e090608
Publication Date: 17 September 2024

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Publication: Geophysical Research Letters
UBC Author(s): Marwan Hassan (Geography / Faculty of Arts)
ISSN: 00948276
Volume: 51
Publication Date: 16 September 2024

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Publication: Earth Surface Processes and Landforms
UBC Author(s): Marwan Hassan (Geography / Faculty of Arts)
ISSN: 01979337
Volume: 49
Page Range: 3367-3382
Publication Date: 15 September 2024

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Publication: Journal of vision
UBC Author(s): Joan Ongchoco (Psychology / Faculty of Arts)
Volume: 24
Page Range: 9
Publication Date: 3 September 2024

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Publication: PLoS ONE
UBC Author(s): Catharine Rankin (Psychology / Faculty of Arts)
Volume: 19
Publication Date: September 2024

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Publication: Bulletin of the World Health Organization
UBC Author(s): Veena Sriram (School of Public Policy / Faculty of Arts)
Volume: 102
Page Range: 650-656
Publication Date: 1 September 2024

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Publication: Behaviour Research and Therapy
UBC Author(s): Joelle LeMoult (Psychology / Faculty of Arts)
ISSN: 00057967
Volume: 180
Publication Date: September 2024

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Publication: Differences
UBC Author(s): Kimberly Bain (English / Faculty of Arts)
ISSN: 10407391
Volume: 35
Page Range: 109-131
Publication Date: 1 September 2024

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Publication: Campbell Systematic Reviews
UBC Author(s): Tarun Khanna (School of Public Policy / Faculty of Arts)
ISSN: 18911803
Volume: 20
Publication Date: September 2024

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Publication: Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin
UBC Author(s): Kristin Laurin (Psychology / Faculty of Arts)
ISSN: 01461672
Volume: 50
Page Range: 1386-1407
Publication Date: September 2024

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Publication: Consciousness and Cognition
UBC Author(s): Alan Forbes Kingstone (Psychology / Faculty of Arts)
ISSN: 10538100
Volume: 124
Publication Date: September 2024

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Publication: Children and Society
UBC Author(s): Lea Caragata (Social Work / Faculty of Arts)
ISSN: 09510605
Volume: 38
Page Range: 1435-1450
Publication Date: September 2024

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Publication: Behaviour Research and Therapy
UBC Author(s): Jason Rights (Psychology / Faculty of Arts), Daniela Palombo (Psychology / Faculty of Arts), Connor Kerns (Psychology / Faculty of Arts), Frances Chen (Psychology / Faculty of Arts)
ISSN: 00057967
Volume: 180
Publication Date: September 2024

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Publication: Acta Astronautica
UBC Author(s): Michael Byers (Political Science / Faculty of Arts)
ISSN: 00945765
Volume: 222
Page Range: 69-80
Publication Date: September 2024

View Publication
Publication: Journal of Affective Disorders
UBC Author(s): Elisha Klonsky (Psychology / Faculty of Arts)
ISSN: 01650327
Volume: 360
Page Range: 108-113
Publication Date: 1 September 2024

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Recent Thesis Submissions

Doctoral Citations

A doctoral citation summarizes the nature of the independent research, provides a high-level overview of the study, states the significance of the work and says who will benefit from the findings in clear, non-specialized language, so that members of a lay audience will understand it.
Year Citation Program
2023 Dr. Salles advanced the documentation of Pirahã, a vulnerable language spoken in the Amazon, and contributed to destigmatizing a non-standard dialect of Brazilian Portuguese. Her work also provided a fresh take on a long-standing puzzle in the field of linguistics, by proposing that nouns can be licensed by categories other than articles. Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics (PhD)
2023 There are many unsolvable debates in the world. How do we use the Internet to make sense of them? Dr. Novin researched how biases on the Internet influenced student inquiries, search strategies, and decisions. He documented the cognitive methods participants used to counter biases. This will help educators with teaching critical thinking skills. Doctor of Philosophy in Library, Archival and Information Studies (PhD)
2023 Dr. Ji studies the in-process tensions surrounding boundaries that emerge from and respond to the interplay of difference and sameness, with a particular focus on the transformation of ethnic minority identities in post-socialist China. Doctor of Philosophy in Anthropology (PhD)
2023 Dr. Yan examined the interactions between the Chinese and Spaniards in the Philippines through the creation of a Spanish manuscript, the Boxer Codex (1590s). Her study illuminates the convergence of sixteenth-century book cultures from China and Europe, offering fresh perspectives on the Sino-Hispanic relations in the Spanish colony. Doctor of Philosophy in History (PhD)
2023 Dr. Ono explored how mothers facing violence navigate child protection and family law systems. Her research uncovered how practices are ideologically-driven by the legal principle best interests of the child, causing more harm to women and children. This contributes to social work by highlighting how texts can be tools of resistance not complicity. Doctor of Philosophy in Social Work (PhD)
2023 Dr. Matavelli examined the role of lack of communication in perpetuating misperceptions about social norms, especifically in the context of masculinity norms. She also investigated the role of norms change, proxied by an election outcome, on violence against women. She then showed that psychedelic intake led people to leave the formal labour market. Doctor of Philosophy in Economics (PhD)
2023 Dr. Wang studied the value of Chinese art song to Western vocal pedagogy. He introduced a collection of Chinese art song teaching repertoire and created a new Mandarin IPA system to solve the Mandarin pronunciation difficulty in singing. His study will enable Western educators to incorporate Chinese art songs more effectively into their curricula. Doctor of Musical Arts in Orchestral Instrument (DMA)
2023 Dr. Leischner studied what happens to Indigenous voices when they are recorded and held in museums and archives. Guided by members of the Nuxalk Nation, she found that the collection and stewardship of these recordings overlaps with logics of resource extraction. Her findings emphasize the importance of Indigenous law and anti-extractive research. Doctor of Philosophy in Anthropology (PhD)
2023 Dr. Vega Acuna studied, using a field experiment, how leadership roles can improve the academic performance and social integration of low-income students at a top university in Peru. He also shows how low-income students, during the Covid-19 online classes period, faced more difficulties to score higher grades than other students. Doctor of Philosophy in Economics (PhD)
2023 Nikolai Medtner was a Russian composer whose large contribution to the art song genre has gone mostly unnoticed. Dr. Stanyer looks at how Medtner set complex Russian and German poetry to music, and how he communicated text and meaning through music. This research will be beneficial to future performers of these wonderful art songs to aid in interpretation. Doctor of Musical Arts in Piano (DMA)

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