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. Harrison explored the origins and development of stage fighting in Canada. He examined how the British and American influences in the art of stage combat affected Canadian theatrical violence, and how fight directors have developed as professional artists since the inception of Canada's Stratford Shakespeare Festival. | Doctor of Philosophy in Theatre (PhD) |
| 2012 | Dr. Stanev developed a theoretical framework for decision making, together with guidelines that provide important considerations for deciding on clinical trial conduct. These considerations include principles addressing the complexity of interpreting and evaluating interim decisions, based on epistemic and ethical factors, e.g. health, intervention, efficacy, and harm. | Doctor of Philosophy in Philosophy (PhD) |
| 2012 | Dr. Sze studied the ways in which Chinese people in early medieval times understood and built Buddhist stûpas, the monuments housing sacred relics. She found they did not adopt the unique symbolic meanings narrated in Buddhist scriptures, but considered them to be just like other Buddhist buildings, and often linked them with political dignitaries. | Doctor of Philosophy in Asian Studies (PhD) |
| 2012 | Dr. Belfry-Munroe examined why many Canadian firms and associations supported a national carbon price, either a cap-and-trade program or a carbon tax, after 2006/07. Her work helps us understand why businesses adopt preferences for particular government policies, and sets the stage for future research into business influence on government policy choices in Canada. | Doctor of Philosophy in Political Science (PhD) |
| 2012 | Dr. Levin investigated ways in which individuals with prostate cancer cope, psychologically, at a time of having to make critical treatment choices. Patients struggle with uncertainty, in particular, and Dr. Levin's work strongly supports the idea that each patient has unique information and support needs that health professionals need to uncover and respect. | Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology (PhD) |
| 2012 | Dr. Belogurova studied the history of the Malayan Communist Party in the 1920s and 1930s, leading to a devastating anti-British insurgency in the 1950s. She explored unintended consequences and contingencies of the revolutionary connections between China, Southeast Asia and the Third Communist International in Moscow, and showed that those connections resulted in the rise of Malayan nationalism among the Chinese communists in Malaya | Doctor of Philosophy in History (PhD) |
| 2012 | Dr. Gervais studied the psychological causes and consequences of religious belief and disbelief. His dissertation work explored the psychological foundations of prejudice against atheists. His findings demonstrated that the prejudice mostly stems from moral distrust. | Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology (PhD) |
| 2012 | Dr. Topornycky argues that moral responsibility does not require that choice originates outside the natural web of cause and effect. Choice is of moral concern because it partially constitutes our personhood. When we treat each other as persons, we are concerned with each other's will, which we protect by affording rights, and also holding one another responsible. | Doctor of Philosophy in Philosophy (PhD) |
| 2012 | Dr. Park studied stories written in Classical Chinese which are included in Korean story collections from the 17th- to the 19th century. Her research highlights the diversity of the historical contexts of that period, challenges existing nationalistic scholarship, and opens up new possibilities for studying Korean literary culture. | Doctor of Philosophy in Asian Studies (PhD) |
| 2012 | Dr. Wong showed how high-elevation whitebark pine trees have become endangered due to an introduced fungal disease and native insects. She discovered irrecoverable shifts in species composition due to poor pine regeneration, decreased competition among adult trees, and increased growth of alternate tree species. Her research shows how global environmental change, such as introduced diseases, puts native species at risk. | Doctor of Philosophy in Geography (PhD) |