Lara El Mekaui

• Research Fellow, FUTUREMIG - Futures of Migration and Mobility project, Toronto Metropolitan University

Lara El Mekaui is a Research Fellow with the FUTUREMIG: Futures of Migration and Mobility project. A Lebanese immigrant and Ukrainian refugee in Canada, her lived experience of displacement shapes her research on migration, identity, and belonging. Her doctoral work at the University of Waterloo introduced the concept of“hesitant belonging” to examine belonging, generational trauma, and forced migration. She specializes in qualitative and arts-based method and critical digital pedagogy, having designed and taught courses on digital lives.
Publications
El Mekaui, L. (2024). Hesitant belonging: Understanding generational traumas of forced migration in Black and Palestinian diaspora contemporary transnational fiction. UWSpace.

El Mekaui, L. (2024). "Lands of solidarity: Understanding contemporary North American and Palestinian Indigenous realities through interactive documentary". In F. Mussi (Ed.), Stories from the Margins (pp. 260-275). Palgrave Macmillan.

El Mekaui, L., Mothersill, S., & Ricketts, J. (2024). "Explorations of Camille Turner's Unmapped". Canadian Theater Review, 198, pp.55-58.

El Mekkawi, L. (2020). "The hesitant local: The global citizens of Open City and Americanah". In J. Hodapp (Ed.), Afropolitan literature as World Literature (pp. 199-213). Bloomsbury Publishing.

• –present Research Fellow, Toronto Metropolitan University

• University of Waterloo, PhD in English Literature

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