Ryan Stillwagon
Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology (PhD)
Queer Rights to the City: Exploring Mechanisms of Urban Food Security in Vancouver and the Underlying Processes that Imperil LGBTQIA2S+ Survival
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Hassan, Marwan | Department of Geography | Other physical sciences, n.e.c.; Earth and related environmental sciences; Geological and Geomorphological Processes; Channel Stability,; Fluvial geomorphology; Landscape evolution; Sediment transport; Surface hydrology |
| Hayat, Zahra | Department of Anthropology | Pharmaceutical pricing; Quality and intellectual property |
| Heatherington, Tracey | Department of Anthropology | Anthropology; Anthropocene studies; Anthropological engagements with fiction; Critique of neoliberalism; Environmental anthropology; Ethnographic writing and reflexivity; Multi-species ethnography; Political ecology of nature conservation; Power & resistance; Sustainable food systems |
| Heatley, Stephen | Department of Theatre & Film | Theatre, acting, directing, new play development, comedy, commedia dell’arte, solo performance, play producing, Canadian theatre, Canadian plays, Literature, gender/sexuality |
| Heine, Steven | Department of Psychology | Culture and human nature in psychology, culture, how people strive to maintain a sense of meaning in their lives when they encounter anomalies which they are unable to make any sense of, how people understand essences and genetic foundations for human behavior |
| Hermida, Alfred | School of Journalism, Writing, and Media | Social sciences; Digital journalism; Media innovation; social media; Transformation of news; Misinformation |
| Hermiston, Nancy Jane | School of Music | Performing arts, n.e.c.; Other medical sciences; opera, voice, theatre, interdisciplinary work with a diversity of fields and opera; Opera training and its effect on sculpting the brain - Wall Opera Project, Hermiston/L/Boyd/J Werker |
| Hesselink, Nathan | School of Music | Music; ethnomusicology; music analysis; entrainment; rhythmic play and social meaning; Anglo-American rock music; African American popular music |
| Hewitt, Paul | Department of Psychology | perfectionism, Therapy Perfectionism, personality vulnerability, depression, suicide in adults and children |
| Hill, Ian | Department of English Language and Literatures | rhetoric, persuasion, argumentation, technology, weapons, interrogation, political economy, war rhetoric, conflict rhetoric, dissent, mass movements |
| Hirsh, Elizabeth | Department of Sociology | Sociology; Law; Structures and Organization; Inequality, Gender and Race Discrimination, Work Organizations, Law |
| Hnatkovska, Viktoriya | Vancouver School of Economics | International finance, macroeconomics, development economics in India |
| Ho, Janice | Department of English Language and Literatures | English language; twentieth- and twenty-first century British literature and culture; British and transnational modernisms; postcolonial and world Anglophone literatures; contemporary fiction; histories and theories of the novel; human rights studies; infrastructure studies |
| Hodgson, Elizabeth | Department of English Language and Literatures | English Renaissance |
| Hoffmann, Alexandra | Department of Asian Studies | Literature and literary studies; Classical Persian Literature |
| Hoffmann, Florian | Vancouver School of Economics | Labor Economics, Macro Economics, Income Inequality, Education, Mobility |
| Hopewell, Kristen | School of Public Policy and Global Affairs | Public policy; International Political Economy; international relations; international trade; Trade Policy; Global Governance; industrial policy; Development; emerging powers; China; India; Brazil; World Trade Organization (WTO); US-China relations |
| Hopkins, Vincent | Department of Political Science | Political science; Democratic theory and practice; Federalism and Local Politics; Migration Policy and Politics; Public Management; public opinion |
| Hopkinson, Nalo | School of Creative Writing | Creative writing, n.e.c.; Humanities and the arts; Creative Writing: Speculative Ficton, Fantasy, Science Fiction, especially Other Voices |
| Hoppmann, Christiane | Department of Psychology | Psychology and cognitive sciences; Aging Process; Social Aspects of Aging; stress; Health Promotion; social determinants of health; Health and well-being across the adult lifespan and into old age; individual differences in goals |
| Huberman, Isabella | Department of French, Hispanic & Italian Studies | Indigenous literatures; Environment, space and place; Quebec literatures; Indigenous Literature; Cinema of Quebec; Francophone Indigenous narrative arts; Environmental Humanities; Archives and cinema studies; Quebec-Indigenous studies; Decolonial and anticolonial theory; Research creation |
| Huddart, Emily | Department of Sociology | Sociology; Environment and Society; Social and Cultural Factors of Environmental Protection; Gender; social class; Sustainable consumption |
| Hudson, Peter | Department of Geography | Pan-Africanism and the Black radicalism; Political Economy, capitalism, imperialism; Archives, historiography, and historical methodologies |
| Hudson Kam, Carla | Department of Linguistics | Language development, second language acquisition, critical periods for learning, input and language learning, language learning and language change, Psychology, First and second language acquisition, gesture and language learning, language contact and language change |
| Huebner, Kurt | Department of Political Science | European integration; euro and global currency regimes; international trade and fdi; sustainability and innovation policies; global macroeconomics;European politics, Money and currency regimes, politics and economics of European integration as well as on contradictions and complementarities of sustainability and international competitiveness |
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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)
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Pidgin poetics : language culture in modern China (ASIA - PHD)
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Statues in early modern English drama (ENGL - MA)
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. Stirling Hill examined the relationship between literary and legal constructions of female voice in medieval England and France. Her research considers the intersection between history and fiction, and shows how the literal policing of women's voices became a literary trope that worked to devalue women's voices in society. | Doctor of Philosophy in English (PhD) |
| 2023 | Dr. Luo examined the underlying cognitive mechanisms of behavioural interventions. He developed a framework that organizes interventions according to cognitive principles and helps inform the design and development of future interventions based on cognitive insights. | Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology (PhD) |
| 2023 | Dr. Klein studied moral intuition's impact on experts' conceptualizations of international order via interviews, establishing that moral foundations influence their notions of change, progress, and threat. This substantiates the idea that moral intuition shapes both the scholars' theoretical leanings and the practitioners' foreign policy stances. | Doctor of Philosophy in Political Science (PhD) |
| 2023 | Dr. Simpson examined the critical reception of video art in the 1970s. Focusing on a landmark and contentious essay diagnosing video as inherently narcissistic, he unpacked the stakes and consequences of this conclusion. The result is an argument for video as an instrument to critically examine expanded forms of clinical thinking and living. | Doctor of Philosophy in Art History (PhD) |
| 2023 | Dr. Williams' thesis oratorio, Sprinkle Coal Dust on my Grave, is based on the West Virginia Mine Wars. Using a mixture of classical and Appalachian musical styles, Williams depicts a violent period of U.S. labor history, employing texts taken from witness testimony as well as songs and poems of the era. | Doctor of Musical Arts in Composition (DMA) |
| 2023 | Dr. Stephens examined caricature within popular Parisian magazines of mid-19th century France. A major theme in his analysis is how caricaturists secretly used embedded worker's slang to carry hidden messages to evade censorship. His research significantly expands our understanding of the work of artist Honoré Daumier. | Doctor of Philosophy in Art History (PhD) |
| 2023 | Dr. Jelsing examined Indigenous and settler colonial visions of the future as they were articulated through prophecy in two nineteenth-century North American "northwests". He showed how these prophecies expressed divergent modes of relationship that help us understand how settler colonialism unfolded in these two distinct places. | Doctor of Philosophy in History (PhD) |
| 2023 | Dr. Brake's work focuses on friendships and social relationships among adults diagnosed with autism. His research helps us in understanding the life and social experiences of autistic people and the physical, social, and emotional challenges that they face in their daily lives. | Doctor of Philosophy in Anthropology (PhD) |
| 2023 | Dr. Guzman studied the behavior of monetary and fiscal policy during economic crises. He showed how fiscal expansions can affect the ability of central banks to use monetary policy against recessions. His work contributes to the understanding of monetary and fiscal policy interactions, and why these policies can exhibit lack of coordination in a crisis. | Doctor of Philosophy in Economics (PhD) |
| 2023 | Dr. Goldman-Hasbun examined perspectives on the free speech and hate speech debate online and on university campuses. She identified complex meaning-making processes and status dynamics, challenging common-sense views of the debate. This research illuminates the importance of examining first-hand perspectives to understand polarized topics. | Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology (PhD) |