Zhichun Jing
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Relevant Thesis-Based Degree Programs
Affiliations to Research Centres, Institutes & Clusters
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Recruitment
Complete these steps before you reach out to a faculty member!
- Familiarize yourself with program requirements. You want to learn as much as possible from the information available to you before you reach out to a faculty member. Be sure to visit the graduate degree program listing and program-specific websites.
- Check whether the program requires you to seek commitment from a supervisor prior to submitting an application. For some programs this is an essential step while others match successful applicants with faculty members within the first year of study. This is either indicated in the program profile under "Admission Information & Requirements" - "Prepare Application" - "Supervision" or on the program website.
- Identify specific faculty members who are conducting research in your specific area of interest.
- Establish that your research interests align with the faculty member’s research interests.
- Read up on the faculty members in the program and the research being conducted in the department.
- Familiarize yourself with their work, read their recent publications and past theses/dissertations that they supervised. Be certain that their research is indeed what you are hoping to study.
- Compose an error-free and grammatically correct email addressed to your specifically targeted faculty member, and remember to use their correct titles.
- Do not send non-specific, mass emails to everyone in the department hoping for a match.
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- Include a brief outline of your academic background, why you are interested in working with the faculty member, and what experience you could bring to the department. The supervision enquiry form guides you with targeted questions. Ensure to craft compelling answers to these questions.
- Highlight your achievements and why you are a top student. Faculty members receive dozens of requests from prospective students and you may have less than 30 seconds to pique someone’s interest.
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G+PS regularly provides virtual sessions that focus on admission requirements and procedures and tips how to improve your application.
ADVICE AND INSIGHTS FROM UBC FACULTY ON REACHING OUT TO SUPERVISORS
These videos contain some general advice from faculty across UBC on finding and reaching out to a potential thesis supervisor.
Supervision Enquiry
Graduate Student Supervision
Doctoral Student Supervision
Dissertations completed in 2010 or later are listed below. Please note that there is a 6-12 month delay to add the latest dissertations.
The full abstract for this thesis is available in the body of the thesis, and will be available when the embargo expires.
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Master's Student Supervision
Theses completed in 2010 or later are listed below. Please note that there is a 6-12 month delay to add the latest theses.
This project examines the bronze casting technology of the late Shang Dynasty (1200-1046 BCE). Despite extensive scholarship on the bronzes themselves, the details of the casting process have remained unclear. Considering the relevance of the bronzes in terms of ritual and burial practices, class hierarchy, and royal affiliation, understanding the production behind the bronzes can reveal a great deal about the lives of everyday Shang craftspeople and Shang society as a whole.This project examines bronze foundry remains from Yinxu, the ruins of the last capital of the Shang Dynasty, in an attempt to uncover more information about the late Shang bronze casting process. Emphasizing the behavioural nature of technology, and the information embedded within technological action, this project undertakes replication experiments to explore how the physical properties of the materials directly influenced the behavioural nature of the bronze casting process. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) suggests that the loess used to create bronze molds was processed differently than in other ceramics, with a notably reduced amount of clay. This information is integrated with an experimental program, which concludes that the removal of clay fundamentally facilitates the bronze casting process by minimizing shrinkage, providing structural stability and enabling long-term decoration. This has implications on the labour of the bronze-casting industry, emphasizing an initial process (the removal of clay) in order to facilitate mold construction, decoration and casting at later stages. Examining the ways in which technologies are developed and used, and for what purposes, is a way in which archaeologists can examine past behaviour on both a personal and societal scale. The integration of petrographic analyses with an experimental program highlights how specific behaviours in the late Shang, such as materials processing and labour organization, are reflected in the technological remains of bronze casting. This project concludes that further examination into late Shang bronze casting technology is necessary in order to understand such a politically, socially and spiritually significant industry of the time, offering insight into the daily perspectives of the Shang people due to the inherently behavioural nature of technology.
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The Late Shang dynasty is well-known for its intensive practice of human sacrifice. Headless skeletons and bodiless skulls have been found by archaeologists working at Xibeigang in Anyang, once a royal cemetery in the Late Shang dynasty. Based on the contexts in which they were found, these remains have come to be seen as a result of human sacrifice. While human sacrifice has been a topic of the Late Shang study for many decades, it lacks a thorough study rooted in archaeological materials. Therefore, the characteristics of human sacrifice in the Late Shang remain unclear and the function of human sacrifice has not been thoroughly examined against the archaeological record. In this thesis, I present a systematic qualitative and quantitative analysis of published data of sacrificial human remains at Xibeigang. I analyze the characteristics of human sacrifice at Xibeigang (i.e. physical conditions, gender and age profiles, burial postures and spatial and temporal patenting). Based on these observations, I examine the function of human sacrifice especially within the broad ritual development happening in Anyang during the Late Shang. By doing so, I suggest that Shang rulers were increasingly being honored by human sacrifice which, in earlier times, was dedicated to certain deities. It was under this process that human sacrifice became a powerful instrument for Shang rulers to legitimize their political power and transform their status – in effort becoming divine kings.
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