Francis Yuen
Master of Arts in Psychology (MA)
The origins of dehumanization
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 |
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Fisher, Kevin | Department of Ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern Studies | Prehistoric archaeology; Anthropology; Archaeological theory; Archaeometry; Archeological Data Analysis; Archeological Excavation Methods and Techniques; architecture; built environments; digital archaeology; Dynamics of Social Transformations; Mediterranean archaeology; Near Eastern archaeology; power; Social Life / Societal Life; social interaction; Urban Spaces and Urbanity; urbanism |
Fisher, Alexander | School of Music | Music, n.e.c.; musicology; music; Sound Studies; History; religious history |
Flake, Jessica | Department of Psychology | applied measurement and modeling research, psychological measurement, theoretical and qualitative issues in instrument development, psychometric latent variables models |
Floresco, Stanley | Department of Psychology | Neural circuits subserving learning and executive functions, behavioural and electrophysiological analyses of limbic-cortical-striatal interactions involved in decision making and behavioural flexibility, animal models of schizophrenia and drug addiction |
Fortin, Nicole | Vancouver School of Economics | Wage inequality and its links to labour market institutions and public policies, including higher education policies economic progress of women, gender equality policies, and gender issues in education |
Frackman, Kyle | Department of Central, Eastern & Northern European Studies | Cinema studies; Media studies (except social media and digital media); Literature and literary studies; Cultural studies; queer studies; German studies; media studies; history of sexuality; sexuality; sexuality studies; East Germany; film; Gender Studies; history of science; literature; Media; Media Types (Radio, Television, Written Press, etc.); Scandinavia |
Franch Ballester, Jose | School of Music | Spanish clarinetist |
Francois, Patrick | Vancouver School of Economics | African Autocracies, Economics of Developing Countries, Indian Village Governance, Macro, development, problems in development economies, political economy and non profits |
Frandy, Tim | Department of Central, Eastern & Northern European Studies | traditional culture, decolonization, environments, education, and cultural revitalization |
Frank, Adam | Department of English Language and Literatures | American literatures; American literature and media, affect theory, modernism, science and technology studies |
Frelick, Nancy | Department of English Language and Literatures, Department of French, Hispanic & Italian Studies | Renaissance literatures; Literature and critical theory |
French, Whitney | School of Creative Writing | memory, loss, technology, and nature |
Fu, Qiang | Department of Sociology | a multidisciplinary perspective on institutional changes, social networks and mental health over the urban space; comparative and temporal analysis of civic engagement and identity; child and youth well-being (e.g., obesity and school bullying); developing |
Fuller, Sylvia | Department of Sociology | precarious employment; inequality; work; gender and work; immigration, Work and Labour, Inequality, Gender, Economic Sociology, Social Policy, Welfare state restructuring |
Fulton, Bruce | Department of Asian Studies | Literary translation, Modern Korean fiction, women |
Fung, David | School of Music | |
Gaertner, David | Institute for Critical Indigenous Studies | Indigenous literatures; Media, visual and digital culture; Critical identity, ethnic and race studies; Indigenous Literature; Digital storytelling; Digital Humanities; Speculative fiction; Reconciliation; New Media; Indigenous Cyberspace |
Gagnon, Olivia Michiko | Department of Theatre & Film | Performance studies; minoritarian performance and cultural production; Multimedia art-making; critical race and ethnic studies; feminist and queer theory; critical Indigenous studies; Archival Theory; performative writing |
Gallipoli, Giovanni | Vancouver School of Economics | Macroeconomics (including monetary and fiscal theory); Economic Policies; Economic Phenomena on a National or International Level; Economic Phenomena on an Individual or Organizational Level; applied microeconomics; computational economics; labor economics; macroeconomics; Consumption theory and measurement |
Gao, Ying | Vancouver School of Economics | Microeconomic theory; Signaling Games; Information Design |
Gardner, Gregg | Department of Ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern Studies | Judaism, Rabbinic Literature, Rabbinic Judaism, Mishnah, Talmud, Jewish Studies, Jewish Law, Jewish Ethics, Charity, Jewish Ethics, Archaeology of Israel, Archaeology and Hebrew Bible, Archaeology of Jerusalemn |
Gelinas-Lemaire, Vincent | Department of French, Hispanic & Italian Studies | French language; Arts, Literature and Subjectivity; Comparative Literature; Creative Writing; French Literature (1945 to the present); Québec and French-Canadian Literature and Culture; Spatial Poetics; Visual Culture |
Georgopulos, Nicole | Department of Art History, Visual Art & Theory | Art history and theory; French art; nineteenth-century art and visual culture; art and science; gender and early feminism |
Ghaziani, Amin | Department of Sociology | Sociology; Sociology of sexualities; Urban sociology; Cultural sociology; queer nightlife; gay neighbourhoods |
Gick, Bryan | Department of Linguistics | phonetics, speech science, speech motor control, speech perception, multimodal perception, tactile perception, ultrasound imaging of speech, sounds of the world’s languages, Physical mechanisms of speech production, speech research |
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. García Martínez developed the conceptual distinction between accumulation and cumulation. The former is a system of value built on the latter. He proposed that for our contemporary crisis, writing depicts a cumulation, a profuse pile-up, ever more resistant to the imposition of some kind of system of value. | Doctor of Philosophy in Hispanic Studies (PhD) |
2023 | Dr. Exler studied the hydrology of drained peatlands with a focus on how plant community shifts affect water exchange between the atmosphere and the peat body. His findings help understand how climate change may affect peatland ecohydrology, which is an integral part of ecosystem health in these environments that controls greenhouse gas release. | Doctor of Philosophy in Geography (PhD) |
2023 | How might we better alleviate poverty and mitigate inequality? Dr. Peng studied how satellite data reveals local political dynamics that impact developmental outcomes, how the success of global superpowers could influence the political attitudes of foreign citizens, and why those who qualify for social assistance might not take it up. | Doctor of Philosophy in Political Science (PhD) |
2023 | Dr. Khalis examined how social media usage and psychopathology impact one another. He found that certain aspects of social media usage can increase risk for depression, anxiety, and ADHD symptoms, and that psychopathology can also influence how we use social media. This research underscores the importance of mental health in the online context. | Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology (PhD) |
2023 | Dr. Liu examined the characteristics of the emerging pink market and the institutions within the pink economy in China. His research demonstrates how the state, sexuality, gender, sociocultural norms, and cultural trends shape market economies. | Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology (PhD) |
2023 | Dr. MacDonald examined a series of nineteenth-century representations of biofluids and epidemics to argue that authors used contagion metaphors in surprising ways - to articulate unexpected sites of contact, connection, and community. Her study contributes to modern conversations about how contagion can put us in touch in the post-COVID era. | Doctor of Philosophy in English (PhD) |
2023 | Dr. Lee explored how engaging in prosocial behavior, including acts of kindness and helping others, can help individuals restore their social connections. Her research suggests that an intervention promoting prosocial behavior is a promising approach to address loneliness and social isolation, particularly for individuals experiencing chronic loneliness. | Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology (PhD) |
2023 | Dr. Heard examined how the effectiveness of civilian harm response and compensation influences the ways in which the legitimacy of counterinsurgency operations are perceived by affected communities. This research illuminates the strategic role of survivor-centric approaches to harm mitigation and response in contemporary conflict. | Doctor of Philosophy in Political Science (PhD) |
2023 | Dr. Dramkin investigated how we map number words to perceptual magnitudes. Her work shows that by understanding the shared logic between number words and perceptual scales, young children can readily attach number words to their perception of number, length, and area, and even perform intuitive mathematic computations (e.g., division). | Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology (PhD) |
2023 | Dr. Akinwumi investigated the concept of forgetting in postcolonial African and Caribbean literatures. He argues that forgetting is at once a tool of oppression and survival. To be sure, his analysis deepens our insight into the workings of forgetting and helps us to grasp more clearly how the equilibrium between memory and forgetting is achieved. | Doctor of Philosophy in French (PhD) |