The Faculty of Arts is welcoming several new faculty members this year. Meet some of the new profs, and get to know what they’re working on and why they’re excited to be at UBC.
Alex Yu-Ting Lin
Assistant Professor, School of Public Policy and Global Affairs
What is your area of research or teaching?
I study Chinese foreign policy and security affairs in the Asia Pacific. Specifically, I research why rising powers become dissatisfied with the existing international system and seek to change it. My other research examines how these states pursue changes within international institutions or through information warfare.
Why are you excited about being at UBC?
UBC offers a vibrant intellectual community that engages with some of the most pressing global challenges of our time. I appreciate the critical mass of researchers who are interested in producing work that is practically relevant. Finally, at a personal level, it is rewarding to return to my undergraduate alma mater to pay things forward.
Camila Cavalli
Lecturer, Department of Psychology
What is your area of research or teaching?
My teaching is focused on the biological aspects of psychology as well as animal behaviour and human-animal interactions. Most of my research has focused on the study of dog behaviour, particularly aspects of learning and cognition as well as their social behaviour towards humans. A significant portion of this research has involved therapy dogs, examining their sociocognitive abilities as well as the impacts of different ways of incorporating dogs into educational sessions with children.
Why are you excited about being at UBC?
Prior to being a Lecturer in the Psychology department, I was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Animal Welfare Program (LFS), and also taught in the APBI program, so I have been around for a couple years. During this time I have also taken part in several programs at the CTLT which I really enjoyed, as I really value UBC’s student-centered approach to teaching. I am very excited to continue being part of the UBC community now as a Lecturer, and to keep learning with and from my students!
Charlie Rafkin
Assistant Professor, Vancouver School of Economics
What is your area of research or teaching?
I am a behavioral and public economist. I research transfer programs and housing insecurity, often using behavioral economics to shed light on policy analysis. In my dissertation, I looked at the causes of eviction from rental housing in Memphis, Tennessee, particularly how social relationships between landlords and tenants might shape eviction and the design of eviction policy interventions. Beyond eviction, other research has examined benefit program take-up and the evaluation of public policies, like e-cigarette regulations, when people make mistakes or have behavioral biases.
Why are you excited about being at UBC?
I am really looking forward to arriving in Vancouver. The economics department is really friendly and energetic, and has so many researchers I admire. Outside of econ, I’m looking forward to spending time outdoors, improving at cross-country skiing, and debating with Canadian colleagues about whether the course listing for “Behavioural Economics” should really have that extra “u” in the title.
Ho Jung Choi
Associate Professor of Teaching, Department of Asian Studies
What is your area of research or teaching?
I research Korean language pedagogy with a focus on multiliteracies, intercultural competence, and content-based instruction. My work explores immersive and experiential learning, including virtual reality and digital tools, as well as community engagement and teacher development. In teaching, I cover all levels of Korean and design culture-rich courses that integrate contemporary culture, literature, and experiential learning through workshops, field trips, and study abroad programs such as Princeton in Korea.
Why are you excited about being at UBC?
What excites me most about being at UBC is the chance to teach and research in a community where cultural diversity is not just present but actively shapes how we learn from one another. The energy of Vancouver’s global environment and UBC’s interdisciplinary spirit open new possibilities for designing immersive, hands-on experiences in Korean language and culture. I look forward to building bridges, between students and communities, language and culture, and local and global perspectives, while contributing to the growth of Asian Studies and the Korean Language Program.
Holly Hummer
Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology
What is your area of research or teaching?
My research sits at the intersection of family, gender, and population studies. I focus on the social and cultural factors shaping individuals’ family and work decisions and how these factors play into broader population trends. My recent work examines women’s childlessness and reproductive decision-making in multiple contexts, drawing on qualitative, in-depth interviews with individuals in countries such as the U.S. and Japan. I’ll be teaching Sociology of the Family at UBC and I am eager to integrate cross-national, comparative perspectives into my courses.
Why are you excited about being at UBC?
I’m inspired by the work of my colleagues in the Sociology department and am excited to learn from and collaborate with them. The department also has a Family Studies program, which is pretty unique, and I’m looking forward to teaching and advising students who share my interest in examining family behaviors and trends. Finally, I can’t wait to explore the hiking trails and natural beauty that this area of the world offers.
Isabel Papadimitriou
Assistant Professor, Department of Linguistics
What is your area of research or teaching?
My research focuses on understanding language models (LLMs): how do neural networks learn language, how do they process our inputs to create coherent outputs, and what can this teach us about human language learning and representation? My research uses LLMs as a testbed for running experiments that are not possible in humans, and expanding what we hypothesize about in the mysteries of language learning.
I mostly focus on syntax (how we learn and use grammatical rules), and how that interfaces with the way language is used to create meaning in context.
Why are you excited about being at UBC?
The UBC linguistics department has so many amazing people, working on all aspects of language from different angles and with open minds, and I am excited to join in that. I am also very excited that there are so many interdisciplinary researchers in Computer Science who are working on similar ideas, and I am excited about being in a place where this kind of collaboration is possible and encouraged, since it’s these connections that make great research possible.
Jonathan Seinen
Assistant Professor, Department of Theatre and Film
What is your area of research or teaching?
I teach in both the undergraduate acting and graduate directing programs, where I’m able to share my own training and experience with theatre artists as they develop. As theatre practice is passed on from one generation to the next, I’m thrilled to now be learning about where the field is headed from emerging artists stepping into their own.
My research is currently focussed on developing new works for the stage, collaborating with playwrights on new texts, while continuing a freelance career in theatres across the country. I’m especially interested in unearthing stories that have yet to find their way onto the stage and in adapting classic plays in a manner that is resonant for today’s audiences. For some examples of my past work, check out: jonathanseinen.com
Why are you excited about being at UBC?
I’m excited to be joining such a strong group of artists, scholars, and educators in Theatre and Film, keen to contribute to a shared vision of what our practices can offer the present moment. I also hope joining UBC means fomenting new collaborations across disciplines, so that my practice in theatre can continue to engage in a meaningful way with new research and contemporary issues. I’m also delighted to be able to reconnect and build connections with Vancouver’s performing arts scene!
On a personal level, I’m excited to be returning to B.C. I was born in Terrace and moved away as a child, so coming back to the west coast feels like a bit of a homecoming. Being close to the ocean and the mountains again is something I’m grateful for every day. It keeps me energized and grounded.
Karin Filipsson
Lecturer, Department of Central, Eastern and Northern European Studies
What is your area of research or teaching?
I am the lecturer of Swedish language and Nordic studies and my areas of teaching and research are Scandinavian/Nordic literature, culture, cinema and language, in particular post-migrant, transcultural studies, gender studies, and ecocriticism.
Why are you excited about being at UBC?
I am most excited to work with my new colleagues in the CENES department, and continue building our Nordic program. UBC is one of only two universities in Canada offering Swedish courses, and I look forward to engaging with our students in my language courses as well as in my courses in Nordic studies which are topic courses taught in English. I am excited to teach my course NORD332A Post-migrant Perspectives: Identity and Belonging in the Nordic Countries and next term, to teach Nordic Cinema. At UBC, I look forward to many fantastic opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration across the university!
Kate Hale
Assistant Professor, Department of Geography
What is your area of research or teaching?
My research focuses on snowpacks and snowmelt across landscapes, climates, and through time — and the first-order impacts of snow on downstream environments and communities. My ongoing research projects leverage ground-based observations, remote sensing, and computational modeling to obtain a comprehensive understanding of snowpack distribution and snowmelt-derived hydrological processes.
Why are you excited about being at UBC?
I am thrilled to be joining the UBC Geography Department and a group of colleagues with broad and interdisciplinary expertise. The Coast Mountains are one of the most dynamic environments in the world, and British Columbia provides natural laboratories for understanding how snow shapes water resources and ecosystems. I am especially excited to work alongside students in the field.
Lennon Mhishi
Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology
What is your area of research or teaching?
My research intersects the afterlives of slavery and colonialism, music, migration and diaspora, and museums, material culture and creative, arts-based work. As my work is largely collaborative, this research is only possible through the support, generosity and hard work of many different people at various stages. I currently teach courses on music and African/diasporic expressive cultures, as well as on museums, notions of heritage, culture and colonialism. I say teaching, but I am learning as much, or more, than I am teaching, in the manner of being fairly newly arrived, and being grateful for the energy and commitment of the different people I am fortunate to share classrooms and other spaces with.
Why are you excited about being at UBC?
I am excited to work with and learn from my departmental colleagues, students and wider colleagues at UBC, as well as building relationships with different communities here in BC and in Canada in general. I am also eager to continue to be involved with different Centres and Institutes at the university and supporting their commitment to creating spaces for thinking and sharing together, and creatively responding to some of the pressing challenges of our time. It will be great to be part of some of the Africa focused international research and knowledge sharing work that centres Africa’s integral place in thinking and inhabiting the planet, and as a people and a geography (emplaced and dispersed) without whom we cannot be fully worlded. I am excited to learn and grow.
Milan Valyear
Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology
What is your area of research or teaching?
I am in the behavioural neuroscience area of the Department of Psychology. My research leverages optical neuroscience tools to reveal the cells, circuits, and regional dynamics that serve to reinforce and disengage behaviour with the hopes of advancing treatments for addiction.
Why are you excited about being at UBC?
The neuroscience community at UBC is vibrant and rich. My colleagues in Psychology and the Djavad Mowafaghian Centre for Brain Health are pushing the field forward in areas close to my own, offering a wealth of expertise. Together we will make meaningful discoveries.
Phurwa D. Dolpopa
Assistant Professor, Department of Geography
What is your area of research or teaching?
I am a geographer and political ecologist studying environment-state-society relations in the Himalayas. My research develops a deep and critical understanding of how Himalayan Indigenous lifeways interweave with and are shaped by the state-making effects of global biodiversity conservation and national development projects in Nepal. I follow the caterpillar fungus and the snow leopard as a pair of lenses to understand these intersecting processes of socioenvironmental change, as well as key agents shaping them. My community-facing works include a long-term collaborative initiative to document a vast array of Dolpopa oral literatures and analyze them as the foundations of our knowledge, value, and governance systems.
Why are you excited about being at UBC?
UBC offers an exceptional environment for my research and teaching. I am really excited to be a part of the Geography Department, where I have the everyday space to interact and work with colleagues who are shaping the field. I am excited for the opportunity to collaborate with colleagues across disciplines who share an interest in biodiversity through the Interdisciplinary Biodiversity Solutions Collaboratory (IBioS). I am also fortunate to join the UBC Himalaya Program, one of the few such programs remaining in North America. I was excited to hear about the Indigenous Strategic Plan, and I look forward to learning from and building meaningful connections with Indigenous faculty, students, and members of the host nations here.
Rosie Shrout
Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology
What is your area of research or teaching?
My research examines how couples manage common yet challenging stressors—conflict, chronic illness, and cancer—in ways that influence each partner’s long-term health. I’m particularly interested in identifying the underlying psychological, behavioural, and biological pathways that foster each partner’s health and longevity or fuel their disease risk and early mortality. My goal is to identify factors that put couples’ relationships and health at risk and to inform interventions on how couples can grow closer and stronger during turbulent times.
Why are you excited about being at UBC?
I’m thrilled to be part of the Health area in the Psychology Department. The program’s research-oriented focus on the psychological, biological, and social processes that influence health and disease is a perfect fit for my interests. I feel incredibly fortunate to be working alongside such brilliant scholars–and to be near the mountains and water again!
Sadia Shirazi
Assistant Professor, Canada Research Chair (Tier 2), Department of Art History, Visual Art & Theory
What is your area of research or teaching?
I’m a historian of modern and contemporary art, specializing in transregional histories of South Asia, the Indian Ocean and its diasporas. I’m currently working on my first monograph, a “decolonial” history of abstraction focused on peripatetic artists from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh who lived and worked across South Asia, the Indian Ocean, Japan, Europe and the US during the second half of the twentieth century. I’m also a curator and writer, which I consider inextricable parts of my practice. One project I’m working on at the moment is an audio documentary for Performance Space New York of the “02020” project that occurred during the pandemic, when they handed the keys and operating budget to a group of artists to run it. Some call it a “failed” project, I’m interested in failure.
Why are you excited about being at UBC?
I am incredibly excited to be joining the Department of Art History, Visual Art & Theory and teaching classes in art history and curatorial studies. I look forward to sharing and developing my interdisciplinary research, curatorial and archival projects with my new esteemed colleagues and students at UBC. As a newcomer to Vancouver, I am also interested in learning more about the campus, the city, refugee and immigrant communities, and the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ/selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations.
Tom Recht
Lecturer, Department of Ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern Studies
What is your area of research or teaching?
I’m a linguist and classicist with interests in the Greek and Latin languages, their history and development, and the interaction between linguistics and literary art. I received my Ph.D. in Linguistics from UC Berkeley in 2015 with a dissertation on the pragmatic significance of word order in Greek, and have since taught Greek, Latin, and classical literature courses at Berkeley, Stanford, and San Francisco State University, including directing the intensive Berkeley summer workshops in both Greek and Latin.
