Lisa Brunner
Geography and Methods
Thematic Research Area
Home Department
About
I am a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the UBC Centre for Migration Studies and teach in the UBC Department of Educational Studies. My current research is part of the “Migrant Integration in the Mid-21st Century: Bridging Divides” Canada First Research Excellence Fund project, with a focus on “Citizenship and belonging in a globalized and digitalized world.”
I conduct interdisciplinary research on migration, with a focus on higher/adult education, the internationalization of higher education, immigrant ‘integration’ and settlement, and social/global justice. I have researched both forced migration and so-called ‘high-skilled’ migration. As a Regulated Canadian Immigration Consultant and member in good standing with the College of Immigration and Citizenship Consultants
since 2014, I have expertise in Canadian immigration and citizenship policy and law.
My PhD dissertation focused on edugration (an amalgamation of ‘education’ and ‘migration’). It argued that the growing recruitment of international students as (im)migrants has, in some contexts, become a distinct three-step economic immigration process, shifting the role of higher education in society. It framed edugration as a ‘wicked problem’ and thought through its ethical complexities and paradoxes, particularly related to settler colonialism, surveillance, border imperialism, and mobility justice.
Previously, I was a university International Student Advisor for over a decade. I also worked on refugee resettlement research and curriculum design projects with Immigrant Services Society of BC and the Affiliation of Multicultural Societies and Service Agencies of BC in Metro Vancouver, as well as the Cultural Orientation Resource Center at the Center for Applied Linguistics in Washington D.C. These projects involved supporting/assessing refugee settlement in the US and Canada, interrogating the definition and measurement of refugee ‘integration,’ and developing cultural orientation material. In 2007-08 I held a Fulbright grant in Ankara, Turkey where I studied in the Department of Communication and Design at Bilkent University.
I serve on Canada’s Pathways to Prosperity Standing Committee of Students and Junior Scholar Engagement, as well as UBC’s Scholars at Risk Advisory Committee.