Oliver Jacobs
Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology (PhD)
Visual behaviour and its relation to memory
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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 |
| Hoberg, George | School of Public Policy and Global Affairs | forest policy, energy policy, environmental policy, trade and environment, softwood lumber, Olympics, Aboriginal issues (land rights), Forestry policy |
| Hodgson, Elizabeth | Department of English Language and Literatures | English Renaissance |
| Hoffmann, Florian | Vancouver School of Economics | Labor Economics, Macro Economics, Income Inequality, Education, Mobility |
| Hoffmann, Alexandra | Department of Asian Studies | Literature and literary studies; Classical Persian Literature |
| 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 |
| 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)
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. Skeeter investigated how greenhouse gases move into and out of two Arctic ecosystems with permafrost soils in the Mackenzie Delta Region using field observations and machine learning models | Doctor of Philosophy in Geography (PhD) |
| 2023 | Dr. Perez Montelongo studied South African photography since the 1960s, with a focus on black and white analog technologies. She investigated photographic practices that put a question mark on colonial ideas about the genre of landscape photography, both in South Africa and beyond. Her dissertation expanded the scope of the history of photography. | Doctor of Philosophy in Art History (PhD) |
| 2023 | Dr. Pecanha analyzes the effects of a public policy that decreased violence in poor neighborhoods in the city of Rio de Janeiro on learning gains, formal employment and incarceration. He also discusses the impacts of localized temperature shocks on mortality. His research illuminates the role of urban policies in dealing with urban issues. | Doctor of Philosophy in Economics (PhD) |
| 2023 | Dr. Jones studied how transit-oriented development (TOD), increased redevelopment pressure on clusters of Vancouver's aging suburban rental housing. He critiqued the logic of TOD to argue against suburban gentrification and the displacement of marginalized renters. Dr. Jones found that these processes could be ameliorated by City Council leadership. | Doctor of Philosophy in Geography (PhD) |
| 2023 | Dr. Tulloch examined the way young people used Internet memes to process and communicate information in their daily lives. Her research highlights the importance of humour to their memetic storytelling and the implications it holds for digital citizenship education. Laughter,she argues, helps people negotiate the different values memes instantiate. | Doctor of Philosophy in Library, Archival and Information Studies (PhD) |
| 2023 | Dr. McDowell examined how downstream differences in river characteristics cause differences in river response to floods, including topographic changes and sediment transport rates. | Doctor of Philosophy in Geography (PhD) |
| 2023 | Dr. Collins demonstrated how the Japanese new religion Shinnyo-en is shaped by sacred stories about its founders. He found that members form emotional bonds with one another, the founders, and the organization by intertwining the founders' narratives with their own lives and with elements of Japanese Buddhist ritual, objects, spaces, and art. | Doctor of Philosophy in Asian Studies (PhD) |
| 2023 | Dr. Bergen examined landscapes and buildings in medieval and Renaissance allegories. These understudied natural and built environments present a paradigm for metaphor that is as important as personification for this literary genre, and stand at the heart of medieval and early modern thought and writing on space, time, memory, and the individual. | Doctor of Philosophy in English (PhD) |
| 2023 | Dr. Forrest researched the origins and development of a real-time urban traffic control system in Los Angeles, California. Through this case study, he sheds light on how both the material and cultural aspects of a municipal organization shape the city-wide implementation of digital infrastructures. | Doctor of Philosophy in Geography (PhD) |
| 2023 | Is there a pattern to one of humankind's greatest and apparently random natural hazards? Dr. Adams captured order and self-organisation amongst chaotic behaviour in mountain rivers. His experiments reveal that as rivers become more hazardous they also become more predictable and ordered, which provides opportunities for managing them. | Doctor of Philosophy in Geography (PhD) |