Graduate

Research Areas

Our faculty and graduate students do research in all the subfields of political science. We have notable strengths in particular research areas, including Indigenous politics, political behaviour, critical political theory, non-governmental actors in international relations, comparative public policy, environmental politics, and more.

We are particularly strong in quantitative methods, with Canada’s deepest lineup of faculty engaged in systematic quantitative research and the country’s most robust sequence of graduate methods courses for those students wishing to acquire a sophisticated understanding of quantitative analysis.

The department has multiple members working on the politics of Asia, the politics of the Americas, European politics, U.S. politics, and Canadian politics.

Our research area overviews are built to give an overview of the research of the faculty members and graduate students working in each of 24 different areas of the discipline. If you are considering applying to the department, please browse these pages to see the synergies among multiple faculty members working on each topic.

Training in Research & Teaching

We have over 30 full-time faculty members, with diverse research interests and areas of excellence. Our faculty hold research chairs, build innovative research programs, and have strong affiliations with multiple research centres and institutes on campus. Many of our graduate students are research assistants and sometimes co-author papers with faculty.

UBC provides a number of training opportunities so that our graduate students can develop their skills as teachers. Most PhD and MA students will have the opportunity to serve as paid Teaching Assistants, which provides a sustained and comprehensive experience to learn about teaching at the university level while receiving mentorship.