Brandon Hillier
Doctor of Philosophy in Geography (PhD)
How engineers learn to labour: Elite technology work across borders in the United States and Canada
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Hummel, Callan | Department of Political Science | Comparative politics; Why and how communities with little political power organize and negotiate with their governments; Civil society; LGBTQ+ policy; Labor politics; Health Policy; Latin American politics |
| Hunt, Dallas | Department of English Language and Literatures | Indigenous literatures; Indigenous theory & politics; Canadian Literature; Speculative fiction; settler colonial studies; Environmental justice; urban Indigeneity in the ‘reconciliation era’; histories of settler colonialism on the prairies; small, Indigenous publishing houses; settler replacement narratives and Indigenous futurities; poetry of Anishinaabe writer Kateri Akiwenzie-Damm |
| Hur, Nam-Lin | Department of Asian Studies | Japanese, cultural foundations, religion, international relations |
| Huyser, Kimberly | Department of Sociology | |
| Hwang, Il Myoung | Vancouver School of Economics | empirical industrial organization and market design; evaluating different school choice mechanisms |
| Ibrahim, Mohamed | School of Social Work | mental health; addiction among new immigrants and refugees; global mental health |
| Ichikawa, Jonathan | Department of Philosophy | Epistemology; Feminist philosophy; Human rights, justice, and ethical issues; Philosophy of language; Social philosophy; epistemology; ethics; Philosophy of Language; feminist philosophy; ethics of belief; knowledge; skepticism; context-sensitivity; consent; ethics of sex; rape culture |
| Im, Hee Yeon | Department of Psychology | |
| Irani, Anosh | School of Creative Writing | |
| Ishiguro, Laura | Department of History | British Columbia, Canada, and the British Empire; settler colonialism; migration; family; gender; Publications |
| Iurascu, Ilinca | Department of Central, Eastern & Northern European Studies | Comparative literatures; Theories of cultural studies; Media, visual and digital culture; German literature; Comparative Literature; Cultural Studies; media theory; Media history; critical theory; film studies |
| Jaccard, Torsten | Vancouver School of Economics | Economics; international trade |
| Jacobs, Alan Michael | Department of Political Science | Political science; Social Organization and Political Systems; economic inequality; Political economy; public opinion; Public Policy; Research Methodology |
| James, Gareth | Department of Art History, Visual Art & Theory | histories of iconoclasm in which the social divisions and inequities that mark and delimit artistic practice are registered most emphatically |
| Janara, Laura | Department of Political Science | Language and symbolism especially in gendered and familial thinking, politcal theory |
| Jenkins, Carrie | Department of Philosophy | Philosophy; Creative writing; Philosophy, History and Comparative Studies; Creative scholarship; Creative Writing; epistemology; Language and meaning; Metaphysics; Philosophy of love; Romantic love; Fiction; Poetry |
| Jeong, Gyung-Ho | Department of Political Science | Political science; Social Organization and Political Systems; Congress; Foreign Policy; Immigration Policy; Legislative Politics; Public Choice; Trade Policy; US politics |
| Jing, Zhichun | Department of Anthropology | Prehistoric archaeology; Archaeometry; Archaeological theory; Archaeology; Anthropology; Early China; Shang Civilization; Archaeological Science; Early Urbanism; Geoarchaeology; Data Science in Archaeology; Ceramic Petrography; Jade; AI and Archaeology; social sustainability |
| Johnson, Phyllis | Department of Sociology | Allocation of financial and human resources by families coping with stressful circumstances, including immigration and resettlement, family separation, unemployment, and conflicts between work and family responsibilities |
| Johnston, Kirsty | Department of Theatre & Film | Dramatic literature and theatre history with particular interest in disability arts and intersections between health, disability and performance |
| Jorgenson, Andrew | Department of Sociology | Sociology and related studies; Social and economic geography; Other social sciences; climate change; environmental sociology; global political economy; Global Environmental Change; sociology of development; Population health; Comparative-International Sociology; sustainability science |
| Juhasz, Reka | Vancouver School of Economics | Economics; international trade; Economic History; Development and Growth; industrial policy and industrialization |
| Jun, Hyejung | School of Music | Music; choral |
| Jurkevics, Anna | Department of Political Science | critical theory, democratic theory, and the history of German political thought |
| Justice, Daniel | Institute for Critical Indigenous Studies, Department of English Language and Literatures | Aboriginal, First Nations, Metis, Indigenous, Aboriginal literature, Aboriginal cultures, Aboriginal history, Aboriginal Studies, First Nations Studies, badgers, animal studies, cultural studies, GLBT issues, Queer Studies, sexuality, First Nations Studies Program, Indigenous Literature and Expressive Culture |
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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)
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 |
|---|---|---|
| 2024 | Dr. Negri focused on nineteenth-century European art music and how keys relate to one another within and across a "tonal superstructure”—a construct that arranges and ranks the keys of a piece hierarchically and groups key successions in ways that may support interpretations regarding musical continuity, process, goal orientation, and closure. | Doctor of Philosophy in Music, Emphasis Theory (PhD) |
| 2024 | Dr. Peters' research quantified key factors that impact the effectiveness of environmental regulations in the maritime shipping and agricultural sectors. His work highlights the importance of accounting for the complex interactions between firm behaviour, technology, and markets when developing environmental policy. | Doctor of Philosophy in Economics (PhD) |
| 2024 | Dr. Albuquerque investigates topics in the field of the economics of crime and violence, focusing on Latin America and its recent history. The studies that compose his dissertation highlight the interplay between historical events, trust, state capacity, cultural diversity, and political structures in determining the levels of violence and crime. | Doctor of Philosophy in Economics (PhD) |
| 2024 | Dr. Diwan studied how and why audiences in India watch video streaming media. Her work shows the role of factors like language, geolocation, fandom etc. in digital viewership practices. By theorizing this set of audience behavior, she developed the concept of the interactive viewer to advance the understanding of digital audiences in Media Studies. | Doctor of Philosophy in Asian Studies (PhD) |
| 2024 | Dr. Burge studied how relationality plays a role in the revitalization of Lingít, an Indigenous language spoken in the Pacific Northwest. Her work reflects on ideas of gender, identity, organizational structures and academia, and how the intersection of those themes speaks to the active fight to reclaim Lingít as a language, and as a community. | Doctor of Philosophy in Anthropology (PhD) |
| 2024 | Dr. Deberdt addressed the unequal nature of green transition supply chains through the example of cobalt from the Congo. His dissertation demonstrates the greenwashing at stake in the fight against climate change and the more or less unintended human rights abuses of these processes. | Doctor of Philosophy in Anthropology (PhD) |
| 2024 | For her doctoral work, Dr. Bok studied on a global scale the people who think they are capable of providing cities with solutions. Her research found that many of these "solutions" remained unproven and unevaluated, often tangential to what cities really need. It might be of interest to people who work in the area of municipal policy. | Doctor of Philosophy in Geography (PhD) |
| 2024 | How do actors protect their wellbeing, nurture their creativity, and cultivate an ensemble so supportive it embraces its audience? Dr. Fogal studied the theatre training of her four primary mentors including her father Dean Fogal. Preserving their oral traditions through text and film, she illuminates the deeply relational nature of their techniques. | Doctor of Philosophy in Theatre (PhD) |
| 2024 | Dr. Chew examined how ethnic identity affects different types of political attitudes and behaviour in Myanmar and Singapore. She found that its effects are conditioned by institutions and the interests that they generate. Her findings have implications for policymaking in ethnically diverse societies. | Doctor of Philosophy in Political Science (PhD) |
| 2024 | Dr. Manuel's research proposed a literary theory centered in the land and in the relations-based practices of the Syilx Okanagan people. The theory imagines new and dynamic methods of engaging with Indigenous literature beyond its textual form to also include stories told through the land, the body, and through dreams. | Doctor of Philosophy in English (PhD) |