Punjabi Studies is flourishing at UBC. The University offers a full program of Punjabi language classes from the first to third years, and the Punjabi Studies program features an oral history component that allows students to delve into the local history and experience of the Punjabi Canadian community. Oral history was earlier integrated into Punjabi language classes at the third-year level, and it is the focus of a fourth-year level course called “Documenting Punjabi Canada” (HIST/ASIA 475) that was first taught in 2015-6 by Professor Anne Murphy. Please explore the links above to find out more.

Community engagement is a major commitment of the Punjabi Studies program at UBC. We have partnered with numerous community organizations over the past decade, including the Vancouver International Bhangra Celebration (for several public events and a conference); the Dr. Hari Sharma Foundation (for several public events at UBC and elsewhere, and for our annual program, described below); the Chetna Association of Canada; Rangmanch Punjabi Theatre; and other organizations. One special new related development in the Department of Asian Studies is the founding of a Dr. B. R. Ambedkar Annual Memorial Lecture, a cooperative project of the Department of Asian Studies, The Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Program in Buddhism and Contemporary Society 何鴻毅家族基金佛學與當代社會課程, and the Centre for India and South Asia Research in the Institute for Asian Research in partnership with the Institute of Humanities at Simon Fraser University, the Dr. Hari Sharma Foundation, and the Chetna Association of Canada. The first of these Annual Lectures took place in November 2017. The goal of these programs is to bring scholarship to a wider public, and to explore research related to topics of broad interest and import. The Punjabi Language Oral History program, also featured on this site, is fundamentally driven by a commitment to community engagement, and involves students in the documentation and dissemination of Punjabi Canadian history; this was recently extended through the PURE, Program for Undergraduate Research Experience. This commitment to local history was extended in 2017 with Dr. Murphy’s role in a Canada 150+ project entitled “Canada at 150+: Trauma, Memory, and the Story of Canada,” a series of art events in Vancouver that explore painful aspects of the story of Canada deserving of recognition as a part of the commemoration of the confederation of Canada in 2017. The project was initiated by the South Asian Canadian Histories Association (SACHA), a now-closed organization of which Dr. Murphy was a co-founder; it received major funding from the Canada 150 Fund, as well as UBC, the City of Vancouver and the Canada Council for the Arts, with additional support from Simon Fraser University Woodward’s.

Find out more about ongoing and past research and projects, our class-based oral history program, and more, through the navigation links above.