Photo: Martin Dee
Applicants to Master’s and Doctoral degrees are not affected by the recently announced cap on study permits. Review more details
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.
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 |
|---|---|---|
| 2015 | Dr. Shepard worked with several endangered language communities to examine how cultural beliefs impact ideology around language preservation. He explored issues of sovereignty, indigeneity, public dissemination of knowledge and archive management. The research identifies strategies for increasing the efficacy of Native language preservation efforts. | Doctor of Philosophy in Anthropology (PhD) |
| 2015 | Dr. Chehab studied developments in seventeenth-century Spanish painting. She examined the emergence of the genre of still-life painting in relation to more traditional forms of religious imagery, and argues that still life functioned as a forum for pictorial experimentation. This research broadens our understanding of Spanish imagery of this period. | Doctor of Philosophy in Art History (PhD) |
| 2015 | Dr. Shesterinina studied mobilization in civil war. Intensive fieldwork in Abkhazia showed that it was activation of collective norms and understandings of history and identity that triggered participation in violence, rather than personal safety calculations. This research helps us understand the decisions of ordinary people in high-risk conditions. | Doctor of Philosophy in Political Science (PhD) |
| 2014 | Dr. Patterson's research shows that population health is stronger in democratic countries. Compared to other countries, democracies have about 11 years of longer life expectancy, 57% less infant mortality, and 21% less overall mortality. He concludes that democracies improve life expectancy, in large part by promoting economic prosperity. | Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology (PhD) |
| 2014 | Dr. Rosales worked in the history and philosophy of science, at both the Department of Philosophy and the Biodiversity Research Centre at UBC . He showed that scientists need narratives to explore, represent, and explain the world. Our understanding of science is incomplete without taking into account its narrative component. | Doctor of Philosophy in Philosophy (PhD) |
| 2014 | Dr. Tockman examined indigenous rights and self-governance in Bolivia. He observed divergent trajectories in 11 new institutions of indigenous self-governance, which is due to power relations among indigenous peoples and contemporary territorial boundaries. He explained why the government has grown increasingly ambivalent toward indigenous rights. | Doctor of Philosophy in Political Science (PhD) |
| 2014 | Dr. Greuel studied speech perception in preverbal infants, and discovered that changing the shape of their mouths with various teething toys affected the way infants process speech. This helps us understand the early links between speech perception and production, and may lead to new treatment methods for children with speech and language disorders. | Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology (PhD) |
| 2014 | Dr. Trim explored the history of renewable energy and sustainable development in Canada. He showed that sustainability emerged from a combination of factors: environmentalists' embrace of science to fight the Cold War, Canadian concerns over American neo-colonialism, and the Trudeau government's efforts to rationalize policy making during the 1970s. | Doctor of Philosophy in History (PhD) |
| 2014 | Dr. Lim examined two interlocking dimensions of change in the Chinese political economy. The study revealed institutional continuities between the Mao and post-Mao era and critically evaluated post-2007 socioeconomic policy experimentation in the Pearl River Delta and Chongqing. | Doctor of Philosophy in Geography (PhD) |
| 2014 | Dr. Nitsan worked with the Guatemalan campaign to end violence against women, to examine tensions between theory and practice within the women's human rights discourse. She argues that, to promote transformative social change, those rights are framed in terms of dignity, grounded in women's diverse life experiences and emphasize agency and self-worth. | Doctor of Philosophy in Anthropology (PhD) |