My areas of specialization include adult and higher education, Canadian immigration policy, international student mobility, temporary and multi-step migration, refugee resettlement, citizenship education, and newcomer settlement and integration from a critical perspective. I also engage in policy-relevant knowledge mobilization and contribute to professional communities of practice.<\/p>\n
Questions my work explores include:<\/p>\n
I research narratives of citizenship<\/a> and citizenship education from various perspectives. In particular, I manage the Photo Narratives of Citizenship<\/a> project, which explores the narratives that shape how newcomers understand citizenship and their connection to\u00a0Truth and Reconciliation<\/a>. You can explore over 80 photos and reflections from newcomers here<\/a>.<\/p>\n I also continue to research international student mobility and states’ retention of international students as economic immigrants. Recent publications have focused on the colonial logics<\/a> of international student mobility, the politics of distance education across borders<\/a>, higher education’s ethical responsibilities to refugee and displaced students<\/a>, the role of higher education institutions as migration governance actors<\/a> in Australia, Canada, and Germany, and a report analyzing Canada’s recent international student policy changes<\/a>.<\/p>\n My postdoctoral research focused on citizenship, specifically narratives of citizenship<\/a> and naturalization ceremonies<\/a>. It was part of a cluster of research on citizenship and participation<\/a> within the multi-institution Migrant Integration in the Mid-21st Century: Bridging Divides<\/a> research program, funded by the Canada First Research Excellence Fund<\/a>.<\/p>\n From August to September 2025, I was a visiting scholar at Concordia University’s Institute for Research on Migration and Society, through the Immigration Research Initiative and funded by the Secr\u00e9tariat du Qu\u00e9bec aux relations canadiennes.<\/p>\n My PhD dissertation<\/a> focused on the ethics of edugration<\/em> (an amalgamation of \u2018education\u2019 and \u2018migration\u2019). It argued that the recruitment of post-secondary international students as (im)migrants has, in some contexts, become a distinct three-step economic immigration process, positioning higher education as a migration actor. It framed edugration<\/em> as a wicked problem and thought through its complexities and paradoxes in the Canadian context, particularly related to settler colonialism, surveillance, border imperialism, and mobility justice.<\/p>\n My MA thesis<\/a> probed the meaning of refugee integration by examining the experiences of refugees resettled from Aceh to Metro Vancouver five years after arrival. It was conducted in coordination with Immigrant Services Society of BC<\/a> and the Acehnese Canadian Community Society.<\/p>\n In 2007-08 I held a Fulbright grant<\/a> in Ankara, Turkey where I studied in the Department of Communication and Design<\/a> and taught at the School of English Language<\/a> at Bilkent University.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I study international migration and education, with a focus on how settler colonial states, institutions, and logics govern mobility and belonging. My areas of specialization include adult and higher education, Canadian immigration policy, international student mobility, temporary and multi-step migration, refugee resettlement, citizenship education, and newcomer settlement and integration from a critical perspective. I also […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":37888,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-256","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/lisarbrunner\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/256","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/lisarbrunner\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/lisarbrunner\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/lisarbrunner\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/37888"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/lisarbrunner\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=256"}],"version-history":[{"count":62,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/lisarbrunner\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/256\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1234,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/lisarbrunner\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/256\/revisions\/1234"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/lisarbrunner\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Past research projects<\/h4>\n