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 |
|---|---|---|
| 2014 | Dr. Randles studied the psychological processes underlying the experience of uncertainty. He discovered that feeling uncertain may best be described as a form of painful distress, where pain medication such as acetaminophen can reduce people's defensive reactions to anxiety-inducing events and inhibit their ability to monitor their own mistakes. | Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology (PhD) |
| 2014 | Dr. Leclerc-Gagne examined how concern for the security of humanitarian workers has emerged and evolved over time. Understanding how this concern developed is essential, because the notion of humanitarian workers as inviolate actors is widely taken for granted. It is also revealing of the dynamics and power relations in world politics. | Doctor of Philosophy in Political Science (PhD) |
| 2014 | Dr. LaSalle studied the history, community and landscape of Pacific Spirit Regional Park in Vancouver. She demonstrated how "nature" in the park is manufactured to forget colonial violence and to feel better about ongoing environmental devastation. Pacific Spirit is thus a site of ideology, ultimately hindering resistance to industrial capitalism. | Doctor of Philosophy in Anthropology (PhD) |
| 2014 | Dr. Zhou suggests that the number of siblings in a Chinese family could affect the household's savings rate. She concludes that the One-child Policy raised aggregate savings rates. She also found that the policy of sending youth to do hard labour during the Chinese Cultural Revolution significantly affected their education, income, and happiness. | Doctor of Philosophy in Economics (PhD) |
| 2014 | Dr. Herba studied people's judgments of contamination spread. She found that contaminants are generally judged to spread further than non-contaminants, regardless of threat, but found differences across populations studied. Her research adds to our understanding of obsessive-compulsive disorder and infection control procedures in medical settings. | Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology (PhD) |
| 2014 | Dr. Murakami studied whether voter behaviour in elections is influenced if candidates come from ethnic minority backgrounds, and if so why, and to what extent. Using experimental and election data from Japan and Canada, he showed that ethnicity does affect voting, but suggested that the effect is conditional on the political orientation of voters. | Doctor of Philosophy in Political Science (PhD) |
| 2014 | Dr. Crawford developed new techniques to measure and map emissions and absorption of carbon dioxide in urban neighborhoods. These measurements also revealed dynamic spatial patterns of carbon dioxide in the urban atmosphere. Findings from this work have implications for urban planning, air quality, and sustainable growth. | Doctor of Philosophy in Geography (PhD) |
| 2014 | Dr. Zhang studied the impact of immigration on Canada. She found that not only do immigrants decrease property crime rates the longer they stay, but also they are a highly educated and more diversified workforce that has positive productivity and adds value to the country. | Doctor of Philosophy in Economics (PhD) |
| 2014 | Dr. Xu studied the correlation between the financial benefits of post-secondary education and choice of occupation. She identified greater financial rewards from certain occupations, which students should consider before starting a program. This challenges the assumption of policy makers that all post-secondary education brings financial benefits. | Doctor of Philosophy in Economics (PhD) |
| 2014 | Dr. Condin studied Duchenne muscular dystrophy, a fatal genetic disease diagnosed in boys. He examined how families cope with the illness, and their experiences testing new genetic treatments in clinical trials. His research will help to incorporate patient views into healthcare delivery, and to develop personalized treatments for rare diseases. | Doctor of Philosophy in Anthropology (PhD) |