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 |
|---|---|---|
| 2012 | Dr. Ikeda used the framework of fascism as a lens through which to understand art and visual culture in wartime Japan. Her study highlighted Japan's intellectual and artistic dialogues with Germany and Italy during the period of extreme nationalism and military conflict and showed how fascism was disseminated through art production and cultural institutions. | Doctor of Philosophy in Art History (PhD) |
| 2012 | Dr. Wang studied the importance of formal and informal institutions in economic development in China. He found that social capital play important roles in voluntary mutual aid and community management of common pool resources in rural China, and the then-existing family class identities still affect households' current economic status in urban China. | Doctor of Philosophy in Economics (PhD) |
| 2012 | Dr. Luesink demonstrates the rapid shift, in China, from a cosmology centered in Confucian orthodoxy toward a scientific worldview based on material practices like anatomical dissection and bolstered by a vast technical terminology. The establishment of these practices led to regulation of the profession and attempts to abolish Chinese medicine. | Doctor of Philosophy in History (PhD) |
| 2012 | Dr. Wu studied migrants from Taiwan who settled in the Vancouver region in the 1960s. Their distinctive shared language and culture generated hostility from the Taiwan government, which considered them a political threat. They formed a vibrant community, deeply committed to Canadian values, and were central to the democratic movement in Taiwan in the 1990s. | Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology (PhD) |
| 2012 | Dr. Chun researched the ways national identity and consciousness are represented through exhibits and programs at two national museums in South Korea. This study illuminates how experiences and memories of Japanese colonial rule have shaped strong anti-colonial nationalist discourses in and around the museums, based on the alleged ethnic-homogeneity of Korean people. | Doctor of Philosophy in Anthropology (PhD) |
| 2012 | Through studies of excavations and comparisons with Roman, Greek and Punic houses, Dr. Aberle demonstrated that Sicily did not just passively absorb ideas in the years 211-70 BC, but instead actively manipulated them. She challenged a prevailing opinion that Sicily has had little influence on Mediterranean culture and has contributed to our knowledge of Sicilian history. | Doctor of Philosophy in Classics (PhD) |
| 2012 | Dr. Koopman conducted 15 months of fieldwork in Colombia with international accompaniers who protect human rights activists under threat. Together they theorized about how they enact their slogan: "Make space for peace." Her findings will help all peace workers use race, class and passport privilege in ways less likely to reinforce domination. | Doctor of Philosophy in Geography (PhD) |
| 2012 | Dr. Falk examined how culture shapes motivation towards pursuing a positive self-image. His research provides insights for better measurement and conceptualization of individuals' automatic thoughts regarding their own self-esteem, and highlights the need for mainstream psychology to recognize important cross-cultural variability in basic human motivations. | Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology (PhD) |
| 2012 | Dr. Cortes studied the labour market experience of individuals working in blue-collar and clerical occupations, where many workers have been replaced by machines and computers over the past 30 years. His findings reveal the extent to which these workers switch jobs, the types of jobs that they switch to, and the wage changes they experience in the short and long-run. | Doctor of Philosophy in Economics (PhD) |
| 2012 | Dr. Barha found that certain estrogen replacement therapies alleviated age-associated cognitive decline and stimulated production of new brain cells in older female rats. The effects were dependent on factors such as the type of estrogen and previous reproductive experience. Results indicate that hormone replacement therapy for women should be individually tailored. | Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology (PhD) |