Younus Mushtaq Ahmed
Doctor of Philosophy in Anthropology (PhD)
Sanitizing ‘sanitation’: Caste, infrastructure, and the politics of development in Chennai’s slums
Canadian Immigration Updates
Review details about the recently announced changes to study and work permits that apply to master’s and doctoral degree students. Read more
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 Centres
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.
Schools / Departments
School
Department
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Flake, Jessica | Department of Psychology | Psychology, social and behavourial aspects, n.e.c.; applied measurement and modeling research; psychological measurement; theoretical and qualitative issues in instrument development; psychometric latent variables models; open science |
| 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 | Performing arts; performing arts, music, piano, piano performance, intersections between music and visual arts; historically informed performance, |
| 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 markets; macroeconomics; Consumption theory and measurement; Trade; Insurance |
| 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 |
| Gillham, David | School of Music | violin |
| Girard, Jonathan | School of Music | conducting, orchestra, opera, new music, conducting pedagogy, orchestral repertoire, symphonic music, orchestral music, orchestration, Berlioz, Stravinsky |
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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.
Recent Thesis Submissions
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The Arthur of the March of Wales (ENGL - PHD)
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 |
|---|---|---|
| 2024 | Dr. Catalano showed how a suite of machine learning algorithms must be adapted in order to estimate a statistical model known as a partition model. This research complements the preponderance of theoretical research that fashions these algorithms as black box algorithms and allows for more geometrically flexible partitions. | Doctor of Philosophy in Economics (PhD) |
| 2024 | Dr. Pegorer studied how a group of recent migrants experienced the city of Berlin, Germany, during two years of the COVID-19 pandemic. By focusing on Berlin's atmospheres, she showed how these people strived to make sense of the contrast between their attachment to the city, their home country, and the expectations associated with their identity as migrants. | Doctor of Philosophy in Anthropology (PhD) |
| 2024 | Dr. Ferrari studied how habits develop as people gamble on slot machines, which are a high-risk form of gambling. He developed a laboratory simulation to detect behavioural signs of slot machine habits, and studied how gamblers interact with this game. His findings help us understand how gambling problems develop on modern gambling products. | Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology (PhD) |
| 2024 | Dr. Morrison studied the relationship between how complexly a political leader thinks and their use of violence in international crises and confrontations. He found that lower complexity of thinking is associated with greater use of violence and with suffering a greater number of fatalities. | Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology (PhD) |
| 2024 | Dr. Krueper investigates the transformative impact of live streaming on political discourse, emphasizing its potential to foster community engagement and empower marginalized voices. He argues that this medium facilitates a more accessible and participatory political landscape as it challenges traditional media hierarchies, enabling diverse perspectives. | Doctor of Philosophy in Cinema and Media Studies (PhD) |
| 2024 | Dr. Gyetvay studied how the sorting of workers across firms shapes the impacts of immigration on the labor market. He finds that the segregation of immigrant workers plays an important role in moderating the effects on wages in receiving labour markets. | Doctor of Philosophy in Economics (PhD) |
| 2024 | Dr. Freitas wrote the musical composition 'My Madness' for soprano and small orchestra as his final thesis. The work sets to music two excepts from the poem The Moral Fibrature of the Ipiranga by Mário de Andrade. The work is a tribute to Andrade and a homage to all artists and intellectuals who promoted The Modern Art Week of 1922 in São Paulo, Brazil. | Doctor of Musical Arts in Composition (DMA) |
| 2024 | Dr. Osing's doctoral research focuses on three types of markers on the skeletal body to explore activity patterns of the late Shang peoples at Yinxu, China. She provided insights into how the body adapts to daily life practices and how it can be shaped by divisions of labour. This research offers a new avenue into analyzing the social dynamics at Yinxu. | Doctor of Philosophy in Anthropology (PhD) |
| 2024 | Dr. Navarro investigated countability and the scope properties of argumental bare nouns (BNs) in Kaingang, a Jê language spoken in southeastern and southern Brazil by the Kaingang people. His unified analysis of countability and scope in Kaingang contributed to the understanding of these phenomena across languages, as well to the documentation of under-represented languages. | Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics (PhD) |
| 2024 | Dr. Jackson studied the cognitive processes that produce meaning in cinema. He explored how sounds and images are understood at a conceptual level, revealing how we combine information from several channels of expression. His research advances our understanding of cognition, narrative, and multimodal communication. | Doctor of Philosophy in English (PhD) |