Dean Clare Haru Crowston (far right) with several of the new Heads and Directors who joined the Dean's welcome reception in September. Photo: Bhagyashree Chatterjee
The Faculty of Arts is pleased to announce the appointment of two new Associate Deans and ten new Heads and Directors.
New Associate Deans
Dr. Andrew Owen
Associate Dean, Academic
Dr. Owen is Associate Professor of Teaching in the Department of Political Science. His research focuses on policy making in Canada, with additional interests in research design, quantitative methods, and political psychology. As Associate Dean, Academic, he supports curriculum development, first-year and interdisciplinary programs, as well as policy review and renewal. He also oversees academic integrity, student academic discipline, and standing appeals.
Dr. Dylan Robinson
Associate Dean, Equity
Dylan Robinson is a xwélmexw (Stó:lō/Skwah) artist, curator, writer, and Associate Professor at the School of Music. He served as the Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Arts at Queen’s University from 2015-2022. His work involves reconnecting kinship with Indigenous life incarcerated in museums and examining Indigenous and settler colonial practices of listening. Additionally, he is leading a process for the reparation and redress of music that appropriates Indigenous song and misrepresents Indigenous culture. His book, Hungry Listening published by University Minnesota Press in 2020, reimagines how we understand and write about the Indigenous listening experience.
New Heads and Directors
Dr. Sara Milstein
Head, Department of Ancient, Mediterranean, and Near Eastern Studies
Dr. Milstein is Professor of Hebrew Bible and Ancient Near Eastern Studies. Her research explores biblical and Mesopotamian law, literary history, and literature. She is the author of Making a Case (2021) and Tracking the Master Scribe (2016), both from Oxford University Press. Her work has been supported by major fellowships including the Killam Trusts and the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies. She received the Killam Teaching Prize in 2016 and a Killam Accelerator Research Fellowship in 2021.
Dr. Vinay Kamat
Head, Department of Anthropology
Dr. Kamat is Professor of Medical Anthropology. For over 30 years, he has conducted research in India and Tanzania on global health politics, healthcare privatization, and marginalized communities under neoliberal reform. He is the author of Silent Violence (2013) and In a Wounded Land (2024), both from the University of Arizona Press. Supported by SSHRC and other funders, his recent projects examine COVID-19 and climate change impacts on artisanal fishing communities. He also previously chaired UBC’s African Studies Minor Program.
Dr. Ervin Malakaj
Head, Department of Central, Eastern, and Northern European Studies
Dr. Malakaj is an Associate Professor of German Studies whose research concerns the intersection of queer studies and German cultural history. He is the author of Anders als die Andern (2023) and co-editor of various volumes and special issues of scholarly journals on topics ranging from slapstick cultures, queer cinema, and critical university studies. His work has been supported by SSHRC, the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Humboldt Foundation. For his contribution to the advancement of international German Studies, he was awarded the Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm Prize.
Dr. Glen Coulthard
Director, Institute for Critical Indigenous Studies
Dr. Coulthard is Yellowknives Dene and Associate Professor in the First Nations and Indigenous Studies Program and the Department of Political Science. He is the author of Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition (2014), a widely cited work in Indigenous studies, political science, and geography. He is also a co-founder of Dechinta Centre for Research and Learning, a decolonial, Indigenous land-based post-secondary program in Denendeh (Northwest Territories).
Dr. Jemima Pierre
Director, Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice
Dr. Pierre is Distinguished Faculty of Arts Professor of African and African Diaspora Studies at the Social Justice Institute (GRSJ), and Faculty Associate in Anthropology. A sociocultural anthropologist, her research engages Africa and the African diaspora with a focus on political economy and race, migration, and the politics of knowledge production. She is the author of The Predicament of Blackness: Postcolonial Ghana and the Politics of Race (2013) and co-editor of The Anthropology of White Supremacy (2025). Her forthcoming book, Of Natives, Ethnics, and True Negroes: A Counter-History of Anthropology, will be published shortly.
Dr. Pilar Riaño-Alcalá
Co-Director, Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice
Dr. Riaño-Alcalá is Professor at the Social Justice Institute, co-lead of the Transformative Memory International Network, and Faculty Associate in Anthropology. An anthropologist and ethnographer of memory, her research addresses the afterlives of political violence, landscapes of memory and repair, and ecologies of absence and presence. She has collaborated for over 14 years with Black and Indigenous communities in Colombia on creative and emplaced methodologies. A Senior Fellow at CALAS, she also leads projects on transformative memory, exhumations and burial in Colombia, and Indigenous water knowledges.
Dr. Hedy Law
Director, School of Music
Dr. Law is the Director and Associate Professor of Musicology. Her research includes eighteenth-century French spectacles, gender, Cantonese opera and music, Chinese immigrants in the Pacific Northwest Region, and global music history. Dr. Law has been actively involved in various academic and cultural organizations and has made significant contributions to the field of musicology through her publications and research endeavors. Her book, Music, Pantomime and Freedom in Enlightenment France, was published by Boydell in 2020.
Dr. Paul Bartha
Acting Head, Department of Philosophy
Dr. Bartha is Professor and Acting Head of Philosophy for 2025–26. His research spans logic, decision theory, and philosophy of science, with emphasis on probability, confirmation theory, and precautionary reasoning—especially in environmental decision-making. He is the author of By Parallel Reasoning: The Construction and Evaluation of Analogical Arguments (2010) and is currently developing research on analogical reasoning and precautionary decision processes.
Dr. Katharina Coleman
Acting Head, Department of Political Science
Dr. Coleman is Professor and Acting Head of Political Science for 2025–26. Her research focuses on international relations, especially international organizations, norms, legitimacy, and peace operations. With a regional focus on sub-Saharan Africa, she examines how rules and institutions shape global security. She is co-author of Token Forces: How Tiny Troop Deployments Became Ubiquitous in UN Peacekeeping (2022) and supervises graduate research on legitimacy politics and international organizations.
Dr. M. V. Ramana
Acting Director, School of Public Policy and Global Affairs
Dr. Ramana is Professor and Simons Chair in Disarmament, Global and Human Security at the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs, where he is Acting Director for 2025–26. He is the author of Nuclear is Not the Solution: The Folly of Atomic Power in the Age of Climate Change and The Power of Promise: Examining Nuclear Energy in India. Dr. Ramana is a member of the International Panel on Fissile Materials, the Canadian Pugwash Group, the International Nuclear Risk Assessment Group, and the team that produces the annual World Nuclear Industry Status Report.
