Peter Klein
Research Classification
Research Interests
Relevant Thesis-Based Degree Programs
Affiliations to Research Centres, Institutes & Clusters
Recruitment
Investigative reporting on global supply chains
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.
- Address the faculty members by name. Your contact should be genuine rather than generic.
- 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.
- Demonstrate that you are familiar with their research:
- Convey the specific ways you are a good fit for the program.
- Convey the specific ways the program/lab/faculty member is a good fit for the research you are interested in/already conducting.
- Be enthusiastic, but don’t overdo it.
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
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.
Situated deep in the homelands of First Nations in Treaty 9 territory in the James Bay Lowlands of northern Ontario, the Ring of Fire is a mineral-rich area discovered in 2007 and quickly declared by politicians and mining companies as Canada’s “next oilsands” and “the most promising mineral development opportunity in Ontario in over a century.” These bold declarations have been repeated over and again by political and economic actors, often without critical interrogation by journalists reporting on the mineral discovery. This begs the research question: how does the news media shape and construct the understanding of natural resource extraction projects within the Canadian context? Set within a complex web of competing claim-makers in the resource periphery of northern Ontario, this thesis conducts a content analysis of digital news stories published about the Ring of Fire by the publicly funded Canadian Broadcasting Corporation between 2010 and 2018. The research finds that overwhelmingly the Ring of Fire is constructed by journalists as an economic opportunity promising jobs, increased access to transportation and improvement of quality of life for Indigenous and non-Indigenous inhabitants of the area, and a project dependent on political action. But this is the picture painted largely by male, non-Indigenous, political or economic elites, as the major sources quoted in coverage largely driven by political and economic events, announcements and activities, as opposed to original, critical journalism. This relative lack of diverse perspectives, sources and drivers of coverage raises difficult questions for Canadian journalists reporting on a divisive industry with social, health, economic, ecological and legal implications. It pushes practicing journalists to re-consider how their coverage constructs the public imaginary of place, natural resources, and resource peripheries in Canada.
View record
If this is your researcher profile you can log in to the Faculty & Staff portal to update your details and provide recruitment preferences.