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 |
|---|---|---|
| 2011 | Dr. Derrick described four distinct types of tongue-tip motion used in the production of English flap sounds. He explained why speakers used these categorically different tongue movement strategies in their speech by identifying motor constraints that govern this variation, including gravity, myoelasticity, conflicts between nearby tasks, and variability in individuals' motor skills. | Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics (PhD) |
| 2011 | Dr. Fujimori discovered a correlation between sound and meaning in NATIVE Japanese verbs that had not previously been recognized. Native speakers of Japanese use Vowels such as e and u to denote that an event ends while vowels such as i and o denote that an event continues. This fact sheds new light on how verbs are formed and how languages differ. | Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics (PhD) |
| 2011 | Dr. Christodoulou investigated the linguistic performance of Cypriot-Greek individuals diagnosed with Down Syndrome and established that their grammar is not an impaired version of the adult or child Cypriot-Greek Grammar, as previously suggested. She showed that the majority of the purported grammatical differences are the result of articulation difficulties associated with Down Syndrome. | Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics (PhD) |
| 2011 | Dr. Lloyd examined the same-sex relationships of the prominent Victorian Evangelical, Constance Maynard, and argued that rather than a transgression of Maynard's faith they were integral to it. Lloyd presents a new approach to the relationship between Christianity and sexuality, one which she hopes will inform contemporary Christian dialogue on homosexuality. | Doctor of Philosophy in History (PhD) |
| 2011 | Dr. Flynn developed an international comparative framework for analyzing how the travel experiences of young people, the places they visit, and the guidebooks they use, work together to produce new beaten tracks in the world of backpacking travel. | Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology (PhD) |
| 2011 | Dr. Johannsdottir's study in the field of semantics focussed on constructions called the progressive, in both Icelandic and English. The rarely studied Icelandic constructions are both similar and dissimilar to that of the well-studied English progressive. The research surfaced interesting puzzles, and provided possible solutions. | Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics (PhD) |
| 2011 | Dr. O examined the effects of caribou grazing and trampling on Arctic plant communities. She found that although the effects of grazing were not easily detected, migratory trails that have been used by caribou for thousands of years were distinctly different than the surrounding areas, indicating some habitats may be resistant to change, and once altered, they may not readily recover. | Doctor of Philosophy in Geography (PhD) |
| 2011 | Dr. Paul examined how some recent changes in the Indian economy have affected the most vulnerable sections. The welfare effect of tariff reform is pro-poor in rural areas and pro-rich in urban areas. The historically disadvantaged castes groups have fared well in education and employment. Diet pattern has been changed leading to lower nutritional intake except for fat. | Doctor of Philosophy in Economics (PhD) |
| 2011 | Dr Pemberton analyzed the relevance of Michel Foucault's work to contemporary prisons in the UK and US. Her research showed that recent criminal justice policies have increased inequality. She also identified the gendered and racialized biases in these criminal justice systems that were overlooked by Foucault. | Doctor of Philosophy in Political Science (PhD) |
| 2011 | Dr. McCleary developed a procedure to vastly improve maps of stream networks in a complex glaciated landscape by combining high resolution models of the earth's surface with field data. His new maps, which include information on the distribution of fish and erosion processes, have applications for native species conservation and watershed protection. | Doctor of Philosophy in Geography (PhD) |