About the University

Living in Winnipeg

The city of Winnipeg is home to about 800 000 people and counting, and is a diverse multicultural city in the heart of Canada. Along with affordable housing and a good transit system, Winnipeg is home to a variety of arts, culture, and entertainment, including The Canadian Museum for Human Rights, The Manitoba Museum, The Winnipeg Art Gallery, The Royal Winnipeg Ballet, The Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, NHL Hockey, CFL Football, and various concerts and festivals. The people of Winnipeg are friendly and ethnically diverse, allowing you to experience the advantages of a big city while still appreciating its smaller, town-like atmosphere. With a unique climate of four distinct seasons, the recreation opportunities are endless; Grand Beach, one of the Top 10 beaches in North America, is only an hour away, while the Assiniboine River becomes the world’s largest naturally frozen ice skating trail during the winter.

Although English is the predominant language, Winnipeg’s French Quarter, known as Old St. Boniface, is largely French-speaking with many banks, hotels, service institutions and shops employing multilingual staff. Other notable neighborhoods include trendy Osborne Village, named Canada’s Best Neighborhood in 2012 by the Canadian Institute of Planners, and the Exchange District, named a National Historic Site by the Canadian Government due to its 19th Century terracotta and stone-cut buildings, an architectural feature that is unrivaled in the rest of North America.

Both neighborhoods border the downtown area, making them easily accessible.

Culture in Winnipeg

In addition to the major civic cultural attractions mentioned above, the city is home to hundreds of other galleries, theatres, and performance venues that students in the Cultural Studies MA program can take full advantage of.

Galleries such as Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art, Ace Art Gallery, and Urban Shaman are just some of the smaller-scale institutions that specialize in exhibiting art by contemporary Canadian artists, including art made by Manitobans. The University of Winnipeg even has its own gallery, Gallery 1C03, which exhibits an average of four shows throughout the school year, and often holds free panels, lectures and performances.

Theatres, including Prairie Theatre Exchange, Manitoba Theatre for Young People, Pantages Playhouse, Rainbow Stage and the Gas Station Theatre, in addition to the Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre, all produce professional plays and musicals throughout the year. Mostly located in the downtown and Osborne areas, these theatres are easily accessible, and many offer seasonal packages at a discounted price for students.

Other entertainment venues include Centre Culturel Franco-Manitobain, which offers diverse cultural programming such as jazz music, French movies (with English subtitles), and even dance classes, The West End Cultural Centre, and Eckhardt-Grammaté Hall, a 235 seat theatre located on the 3rd floor of Centennial Hall on the University of Winnipeg campus, which is home to Virtuosi, UWinnipeg’s international recital and chamber music concert series.

As the “cultural cradle of Canada,” Winnipeg offers a variety of art exhibitions and performances that greatly benefit Cultural Studies students at the UWinnipeg. With so many galleries and theatres at their disposal, students are better able to examine the ways in which culture is produced and reproduced, lending significant insight into their studies.

The University of Winnipeg

Located downtown, the University of Winnipeg is close to all major recreation venues, as well as to public transit, sports centres, museums, art galleries, and restaurants. The University of Winnipeg also consistently places in the Top 5 of the annual Maclean’s ranking of Canadian Universities for its overall reputation, and The Globe and Mail ranked it as among the best for its sustainability efforts, diversity, and health food on campus in its 2013 Canadian University Report. Its details such as the fitness centre, seven campus restaurants, coffee shops, library, computer labs, student lounges, medical clinic and bookstore that make the university feel like not only a wonderful academic institution, but a close-knit community as well.

The University offers three on-campus boarding houses, each with a different ambiance: choose from a traditional dorm-style residence; private and inexpensive bachelor suites; or family-style house living. There are also plenty of opportunities to earn some pocket money on campus.

Find out more at the UWinnipeg Campus Living website. 

Graduate Studies at UWinnipeg

The University of Winnipeg currently offers eight masters-level programs and is currently working to expand its Graduate Studies options. Several unique qualities that set our Graduate Programs apart include: unique internships and opportunities for Special Studies; a multi-disciplinary Graduate Student Research Colloquium each Spring, which offers students to both present and receive publishing credit; and the fact that students are encouraged to attend annual graduate symposiums, and often receive funds to travel for conferences from the Faculty of Graduate Studies with additional sponsorship from the Student’s Association (UWSA).