Master of Arts (MA), Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
| Program | Components | Expected Duration |
| MA | Coursework and thesis | 24 months |
| PhD | Coursework and dissertation | 48 months |
The dynamics of power, conflict, and ideas in today’s world are complex and in constant flux. Access to economic opportunity, employment, security, and civil rights protections is not equally available to all members of society. The ability to understand the causes and consequences of these inequalities requires a solid foundation in historical knowledge and contextualised understandings of social and political dynamics. Finding solutions to problems of social inequality and injustice also requires recognition of structural challenges, such as those presented by legal and criminal justice systems, institutions of governance, and other infrastructures of power.
The interdisciplinary graduate degree in power, conflict, and ideas at UBC’s Okanagan campus brings together diverse perspectives, insights, tools, and techniques needed to comprehend and address today’s challenges, and allow graduates to become agents of change.
Students will study the dynamics of political environments, learn how to use archives and historical data, study social theory and theoretical approaches, learn how to apply ethical frameworks, and develop critical analytical skills. In pursuing this field of study, students will be able to pursue rigorous graduate study that culminates in an in-depth individual research project. The interdisciplinary nature of the program, drawing from multiple faculties and departments, allows for a range of teaching and research opportunities in different departments.
Applications for the program open September 1st with a deadline of January 15th each year.
Students are advised to arrange for the delivery of supporting documents well in advance of the January 15th deadline to ensure a timely review of their application.
The interdisciplinary master’s degree in power, conflict, and ideas gives graduate students access to the expertise of diverse, nationally and internationally recognized researchers from a variety of faculties and disciplines in a coherent, thematic framework.
Graduates of the program will come away with a nuanced understanding of:
18 credits of coursework are required, including:
The PhD degree is centred on conducting original, cutting-edge research in areas related to governance, social change, policymaking, inequality, and conflict. Graduates of the PhD program are prepared for careers requiring advanced independent research and teaching in academia, government, and industry.
Nine credits of coursework are required. These will be selected in collaboration with the student’s supervisory committee.
Graduates will be prepared for further academic research and teaching, as well as possible roles in government, the private sector, and not-for-profit organizations. Coursework in this theme concentrates on preparation in historical and sociological inquiry, archival research, and policy analysis. Graduates undertake advanced study of the primary means of effecting change in society, via institutions, culture, and social movements.
This IGS degree draws on the expertise of nationally and internationally recognized faculty researchers with experience in areas related to power, conflict, and ideas, and their effect on our world.
Graduate students can pursue these and other faculty research and teaching interests:
Please touch base with a faculty supervisor before you start the application process. We look forward to hearing about your research interests and career goals.
Anderson Araujo | English | anderson.araujo@ubc.ca |
Research interests: Literary modernism; avant-garde movements; transatlantic aesthetics; politics.
Lawrence Berg | Geography | lawrence.berg@ubc.ca |
Research interests: Critical studies of neoliberalism; geographies of academic knowledge production; place and the politics of identity; postcoloniality; white supremacy.
Bonar Buffam | Sociology | bonar.buffam@ubc.ca |
Research interests: Race and empire; crime and punishment; socio-legal studies; religion and secularity; urban geographies; social and cultural theory.
Margaret Carlyle | History | margaret.carlyle@ubc.ca
Research interests: History of science, technology, and medicine; history of reproduction and the life sciences; gender and women’s studies; history of the body; material culture; science and race in the Atlantic world.
Jodey Castricano | English | jodey.castricano@ubc.ca |
Research interests: Eco-cultures; critical animal studies; eco-criticism – critical theory (feminist, queer, gender studies); media and digital cultures; digital humanities; virtual reality; narrative; HCI theory.
Thomas Heilke | Political Science | thomas.heilke@ubc.ca |
Research interests: Political philosophy and theory; classical political thought; modern political thought; political theology; religion and politics; political ideologies; international relations in political philosophy.
Maxime Heroux-Legault | Economics, Philosophy and Political Science | maxime.heroux-legault@ubc.ca
Research Interests: Canadian Politics, Research Methods, Election studies.
Catherine Higgs | History | catherine.higgs@ubc.ca |
Research interests: Southern Africa; Portuguese Africa; Atlantic World; religion; politics; activism; labour; agriculture; policy.
Jasmin Hristov | Sociology | jasmin.hristov@ubc.ca |
Research interests: Development and conflict; political violence; non-state armed actors; human rights; neoliberalilsm; Latin America; land dispossession; human trafficking and sexual violence.
Jelena Jovicic | French | jelena.jovicic@ubc.ca |
Research interests: Literary theory; critical intellectual history; the epistolary genre and 19th and 20th Century literature (in France and the French Caribbean region); the relationship between the formation of knowledge across disciplines (medicine, law, sciences); dissemination through various discursive practices (literature, architecture, visual arts).
Heather Latimer | Gender and Women’s Studies | heather.latimer@ubc.ca |
Research interests: Reproductive technologies and politics, especially reproductive futurism; biopolitics; sexuality studies; science and technology studies; feminist new materialism and post-humanism; cultural studies; literature and film.
Sean Lawrence | English |sean.lawrence@ubc.ca |
Research interests: Shakespeare; canonical literature and 20th-century French philosophy; Medieval and Renaissance studies; peace and war studies; drama and theatre studies; ethics.
Kelly Struthers Montford | Sociology | k.sm@ubc.ca |
Research interests: Critical prison studies; critical animal studies; philosophy; social theory; food studies; climate change.
Jessica Stites Mor | History | jessica.stites-mor@ubc.ca |
Research interests: Transnational solidarity movements; politics and culture of the left; cinema and digital media.
Ilya Parkins | Gender & Women’s Studies | ilya.parkins@ubc.ca |
Research interests: Feminist theories, especially epistemologies; history and theory of fashion; theories of modernity and early twentieth-century cultural formations; femininities.
Tim Paulson | History | tim.paulson@ubc.ca |
Research interests: Environmental history; economic history; applied/public history; arid landscapes; food; capitalism; markets.
Francisco Peña | World Literatures & Spanish | francisco.pena@ubc.ca |
Research interests: Literary studies; biblical studies; religious studies; history of ideas.
Deana Simonetto | Assistant Professor | Sociology | deana.simonetto@ubc.ca
Research Interests: Gender, Health and Sport, Qualitative Methods Methods, Self and Identity, Symbolic Interaction, Deviance and Social Problems, Social Media.
Margo Tamez | Indigenous Studies | margo.tamez@ubc.ca |
Research interests: Ndé consciousness of time, place, and homeland; Indigenous women’s consciousness of land-based relations in Kónitsąąíí gokíyaa (Lipan Apache country); Indigenous consciousness along the Río Grande River; Indigenous peoples and human rights; borders; militarization; memory; Indigenous decolonial concepts; self-determination; transitional justice; the poetics of Indigenous movements
John Wagner | Anthropology | john.wagner@ubc.ca |
Research interests: Environmental anthropology; political ecology; water, food security and food sovereignty; local ecological knowledge; conservation and development; language documentation; Okanagan Valley; Columbia River Basin; Papua New Guinea.
Helen Yanacopulos | Political Science | helen.yanacopulos@ubc.ca
Research Interests: International Development; collective action and strategy of transnational networks; civil society and NGOs; political communication; international norms; anti-slavery; conflict and development.
Michael Zajko | Sociology | mike.zajko@ubc.ca |
Research interests: Internet and telecom policy; governance of artificial intelligence and algorithms; security and surveillance studies; social and political theory.
Giovanni Grandi | Philosophy | giovanni.grandi@ubc.ca |
Research interests: The history of philosophy and the history of ideas with a particular focus on the early modern period and the Scottish Enlightenment. Theories of sensory perception, moral psychology, philosophy of religion, the philosophy of action, political economy, and philosophical anthropology.
Madeleine Ransom | Philosophy | madeleine.ransom@ubc.ca |
Research interests: I work on understanding human perceptual learning, with a focus on how this process can contribute to gender and racial bias. I am also interested in how human bias relates to bias in machine learning, and how best to address the ethical issues that arise from bias.
Jennifer Gustar | English & Cultural Studies | jennifer.gustar@ubc.ca |
Research interests: Contemporary Women’s Writing; Contemporary British Literature; Black and Minority Ethnic women’s writing (UK); women’s writing from South Asia and the diaspora. Feminist and postcolonial approaches to literature.
INQUISITIVE SOCIOLOGIST: FASS Researcher Mike Zajko investigates internet policy, surveillance and the ethical implications facing some of Canada’s largest telecommunications companies.
Power, Conflict, and Ideas theme students have provided profiles for you to discover more about them and their research.
M.A. Student in Power, Conflict & Ideas
My research interests include gender, 
reproduction politics and discourse. More specifically, the central purpose of my study is investigating the socio-political and historical landscapes that created an environment that promoted and justified sexual sterilization legislation in British Columbia during the early twentieth-century.
PhD Student in Power, Conflict & Ideas
Rahel Losier was born and raised in Nelson, BC. She received her Bachelor of Arts in Cognitive Sciences at SFU. In her third year, she embarked on a gap year to teach English in France through TAPIF (Teaching Assistant Program in France) where she ended up teaching in a high school near Toulouse. After finishing her BA, she won an Erasmus Mundus scholarship to study an MA in Transnational Migration Studies in France, Romania and Senegal. Upon completing the program, she returned to Canada and began illustrating comics about migration. Rahel’s current research interests lie in visual history and culture studies, visual anthropology and sociology.
M.A. Student in Power, Conflict & Ideas
Cassidy Acheson is a settler scholar whose research 
integrates Indigenous Studies and History in order to understand patterns of settler colonialism alongside Indigenous and settler women’s histories. She uses collaborative and place-based methodologies to examine settler acts of claiming land and memory at Nk’maplqs (the Head of the Lake, near Vernon, BC), while highlighting Sqilxw women’s histories of resistance. She is interested in processes of erasure that attempt to eliminate Indigenous women from historical memory and from the land as a tool of settler power, and how Indigenous women refuse this erasure.
To examine the work of previous UBC Okanagan graduate students, search on cIRcle, the University’s digital repository for research and teaching materials.
As a domain of scholarship, creative activity, and teaching, Power, Conflict & Ideas is wide-ranging and interdisciplinary in nature. Power, Conflict & Ideas encourages graduate students to become well-rounded scholars, educators, and public intellectuals. During their degree, students will have the opportunity to conduct original research, learn to become effective educators, and work as Teaching Assistants, as well as acquire knowledge in the professional practices of writing for publication, academic CV development, grant writing, networking, and community-engaged research skills.
Admission to UBC graduate programs is competitive. Applicants must meet the following criteria.
MASTER OF ARTS (MA) APPLICANTS
Applicants to the master’s program are expected to hold:
Applicant background training must be sufficient for advanced work in their chosen field.
DOCTORAL (PHD) APPLICANTS
PhD applicants will normally have a master’s degree in a related field, with a B+ (76%) average or better, and clear evidence of research ability or potential. Applicant background training must be sufficient for advanced work in their chosen field.
MORE INFORMATION
Visit the UBC Okanagan Academic Calendar* for full admission and program requirements information. The calendar is a comprehensive guide to all programs, courses, services, and academic policies at the University of British Columbia.
* In case of a discrepancy between this webpage and the UBC Calendar, the UBC Calendar entry will be held to be correct.
MASTER OF ARTS (MA) APPLICANTS
Applicants to the master’s program are expected to:
Applicant background training must be sufficient for advanced work in their chosen field.
Applicants from a university outside Canada at which English is not the primary language of instruction must present evidence of competency to pursue studies in the English language prior to being extended an offer of admission. Acceptable English language proficiency tests for applicants to graduate studies are:
DOCTORAL (PHD) APPLICANTS
PhD applicants are expected to hold the academic equivalent of a two-year master’s degree from UBC in a related field and to demonstrate superior academic standing. Applicant background training must be sufficient for advanced work in their chosen field.
Applicants from a university outside Canada at which English is not the primary language of instruction must present evidence of competency to pursue studies in the English language prior to being extended an offer of admission. Acceptable English language proficiency tests for applicants to graduate studies are:
MORE INFORMATION
Visit the UBC Okanagan Academic Calendar* for full admission and program requirements information. The calendar is a comprehensive guide to all programs, courses, services, and academic policies at the University of British Columbia.
* In case of a discrepancy between this webpage and the UBC Calendar, the UBC Calendar entry will be held to be correct.
Grades and degree credentials required by UBC vary by country. Search the Required Grades and Credential Guide—a guide to assist international students in estimating their eligibility.
An international student advisor can answer questions about immigration, medical insurance and the transition to UBC’s Okanagan campus in Kelowna, BC. Visit the International Programs and Services website to meet the team.
Tuition amounts presented here are estimates only and all fees are subject to change. For official tuition amounts and fee information, visit the UBC Okanagan Academic Calendar*, a comprehensive guide to all programs, courses, services, and academic policies at the University of British Columbia.
| Program | Schedule | Domestic (per year) | International (per year) |
|---|---|---|---|
| MA | Full-time | $4,897.86 | $8,604.66 |
| PhD | Full-time | $4,897.86 | $8,604.66 |
Tuition is paid three times a year at the beginning of each term, as per the Academic Calendar: Winter Term 1, Winter Term 2, and Summer Term.
* In case of a discrepancy between this webpage and the UBC Calendar, the UBC Calendar entry will be held to be correct.
Graduate student stipends are funded through a combination of internal and external funding awards, Teaching Assistantships, and Research Assistantships.
Although funding and stipend amounts are not guaranteed, the interdisciplinary nature of this program means there are many opportunities for teaching and research with different departments across the campus. Talk to your potential supervisor about funding opportunities.
Students are expected whenever possible to apply for relevant scholarships and fellowships.
Paid TA positions allow graduate students to develop skills in teaching, supervision, facilitation, and student assessment. Teaching assistants may lead seminars, help teach undergraduate courses, or assist in student evaluations and marking. Teaching assistants are mentored by their supervisor and via the Centre for Teaching and Learning.
As paid research assistants, graduate students assist their supervisor or other researchers in conducting high-level research, which often contributes to the student’s thesis. RAs are typically funded by the supervisor’s external grants, contracts and, sometimes, other sources of funding.
The College of Graduate Studies administers merit-based graduate awards at the Okanagan campus. The College manages a number of award competitions each year and administers payment of all internal awards and selected external awards.
All prospective graduate students (Domestic and International) should explore and apply for external awards and fellowships, including awards offered by Canada’s three research councils: CIHR, NSERC and SSHRC.
Graduate scholarships and awards may also be available from foundations, private companies, or foreign governments (check with your country’s education authority).
Please contact prospective supervisors before starting an application. Admission to the program requires the support of a faculty supervisor, as well as meeting program-specific criteria for admission requirements.
A complete application package will contain:
Applying takes time. Students are advised to start the application process two months in advance of the application deadline.
For full consideration, students should submit all application materials by the following deadlines:
| Intake | Application Deadline |
|---|---|
| Domestic applicants | |
| September | January 15 |
| International applicants | |
| September | January 15 |
In some circumstances, at the request of a theme coordinator, the Dean or Dean designate in CoGS may approve an off-cycle admission for a student who would be significantly disadvantaged by having to begin their studies in September.
The University of British Columbia is a global centre for research and teaching, consistently ranked among the 40 best universities in the world. At UBC’s Okanagan campus, you gain all the benefits of attending a globally respected university while studying in a close-knit learning community.
UBC’s Okanagan campus borders the dynamic city of Kelowna, a hub of economic development with a population of about 150,000 people—the fourth fastest growing population in Canada. In fact, the Okanagan Valley is rated one of the best communities in Canada to grow your business.
More than 160 buses travel daily from campus to key locations such as Kelowna’s cultural district and thriving downtown waterfront. The campus is two minutes from the Kelowna International Airport, one of the top 10 busiest airports in Canada.
UBC Okanagan is situated within the First Nations territory of the Okanagan Nation, whose spirit of stewardship for the land is reflected in the university’s respect for sustainability.
A diverse natural region with sandy beaches, beautiful farms, vineyards and orchards, and snow-capped mountains, the Okanagan Valley features sweeping stretches of lakeside and endless mountain trails for biking and hiking.
Check out this 360-degree video: Kelowna From Above (best viewed using desktop Chrome or Firefox or YouTube’s mobile app).
Full-time UBC Okanagan students can live in residence, which offers modern living with easy access to academic and personal support. Residences are surrounded by hiking and biking trails, plus panoramic views of the campus and valley.
* UBC does not verify or endorse information shared on this third-party website, which is offered here as a public resource only.
College of Graduate Studies: CoGS offers orientation events to support you in your first steps as a graduate student at UBC’s Okanagan campus.
Stay active: Take advantage of the many opportunities to get involved and play—from workout space in the new Hangar Fitness and Wellness Centre and our 1,561 square-metre gymnasium, to athletic courts, intramurals, fitness classes, and nationally ranked varsity athletics. Have a ball in Sports and Recreation.
Relax: The Graduate Collegium is a gathering place where grad students can hang out, eat lunch, spend time with their fellow students, and attend or host special events. The lounge-style room is open seven days and week and is outfitted with comfortable furniture, kitchen facilities, and individual and group-work spaces.
College of Graduate Studies: Your hub for administrative support and such things as graduate workshops for professional development and for assisting you from the admissions process through to your graduation.
Centre for Scholarly Communication: Supports graduate students, post-doctoral fellows, staff, and faculty in disseminating their research. The Library’s CSC provides one-on-one consultations and workshops, including writing support for theses, dissertations, journal articles, and grant proposals.
Centre for Teaching and Learning: Provides support related to teaching, TA training, and use of technology in educational programming.
