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.

Questions my work explores include:

– How do education institutions act as migration recruitment, refugee resettlement, selection, integration, nation-building, and bordering actors? What are the consequences of these roles?
– How is education, such as citizenship education, used to perpetuate settler imaginaries? How might this be disrupted?
– What could just migration policies look like in settler colonial Global North contexts?
– How can practitioners in the helping professions—such as educators, student affairs professionals, and immigrant/refugee-serving social workers—be better supported in a period marked by volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (VUCA) and poly-/meta-/perma-crisis?
– What does ethical, community-engaged research look like in practice?

Currently, I am researching narratives of citizenship and citizenship education from various perspectives. In particular, I manage the UBC components of the Bridging Divides Narratives of Citizenship project, which explores the narratives that shape how newcomers understand citizenship and their connection to Truth and Reconciliation.

I also continue to research international student mobility and states’ retention of international students as economic immigrants, which was the focus of my PhD dissertation. My recent publications focus on the colonial logics of international student mobility, the politics of distance education across borders, higher education’s ethical responsibilities to refugee and displaced students, the role of higher education institutions as migration governance actors in Australia, Canada, and Germany, and an analysis of Canada’s recent international student policy changes.

As a scholar-practitioner, I engage in policy-relevant knowledge mobilization and contribute to professional communities of practice. I am a Public Policy Consultant with the Affiliation of Multicultural Societies and Service Agencies of British Columbia. I also worked for over a decade as an International Student Advisor and have been a Regulated Canadian Immigration Consultant (RCIC) since 2014. This work informs my applied understanding of Canadian immigration, citizenship, and settlement policy and practice.

In my role as Research Associate at the Centre for Migration Studies, I advance interdisciplinary research on migration, support training and teaching initiatives, and strengthen policy outreach with government and community partners.

I hold a PhD in Educational Studies from the University of British Columbia and an MA in Geography from Simon Fraser University.

EDST 513: Current issues in Higher Education