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. Dempsey studied the ways ecosystems and biodiversity are becoming increasingly entangled with economic logics and practices. She traced the resulting ethical, scientific, and political issues and argues that the changes are creating a new form of nature that is enterprising, one that can compete in the marketplace and within modern state governance. | Doctor of Philosophy in Geography (PhD) |
| 2012 | Dr. Chan explored dementia caring in Chinese families and showed how family members draw on different cultures in complex, fluid, and non-thinking ways. The complex co-constitution of culture, emotion, and practice in non-thinking ways suggests alternative modes of knowing and being, such as emotional rationality. | Doctor of Philosophy in Social Work (PhD) |
| 2012 | Dr. Thompson studied the structure of sentences in Halkomelem, a Central Salish language. His conclusions provide insights into the way in which phrases and sentences are built. This work will assist grammarians and contribute to the body of knowledge around First Nations languages. | Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics (PhD) |
| 2012 | Dr. Cohen showed how experience with nuclear weapons moderates the high conflict propensity of weak revisionist new nuclear powers. He developed a psychological model that synthesised extant theories about the consequences of nuclear proliferation and offered predictions and policies to address Iranian and North Korean nuclear proliferation. | Doctor of Philosophy in Political Science (PhD) |
| 2012 | Dr. Stern explored intercultural dynamics as they impacted the care of people with dementia in a long-term care facility. Her findings help to begin the acknowledgment and development of more culturally competent and person-centred dementia care in elder care settings as a priority for an increasingly ethnoculturally diverse aging demographic. | Doctor of Philosophy in Social Work (PhD) |
| 2012 | Dr. Carrier-Moisan conducted an ethnographic study of sex tourism in Natal, Brazil. She showed that foreign men and Brazilian women blur affect and interest in ways that challenge common understandings of sex tourism as exploitation. She also revealed that for Brazilian women, sex tourism is a means to achieve social and spatial mobility. | Doctor of Philosophy in Anthropology (PhD) |
| 2012 | Dr. Diotte's research explored connections between labour narratives and discourses of power, gender, patriarchy, tourism, and history in the literature of British Columbia. His research expands our knowledge of literature written about British Columbia and demonstrates how stories of labour connect to larger social and economic concerns. | Doctor of Philosophy in English (PhD) |
| 2012 | Dr. Kim examined multiple images of Korean shamanism, both positive and negative. His goal was to discover how those images affect the shamans' view of themselves, and influence their rituals. It is hoped this study will contribute to overcoming criticisms against various shamanic practices which are not regarded as following the traditional way. | Doctor of Philosophy in Asian Studies (PhD) |
| 2012 | Dr. Moos analyzed how young adults made housing and location decisions in Vancouver and Montreal between 1981 and 2006. His comparative research informs theory and policy in housing market dynamics, and the relations between housing, generational change and social equity, and the environmental impacts of residential location patterns. | Doctor of Philosophy in Geography (PhD) |
| 2011 | Dr. Fellows argued against certain critics that objectivity is a valuable ideal in epistemology and ethics, even if it cannot be attained. Using history, feminism and philosophy, she formed an account of objectivity in bioscience and anthropology. In this account, objectivity aids trust-building across communities and relies on epistemic humility. | Doctor of Philosophy in Philosophy (PhD) |