Lara El Mekaui

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. http://hdl.handle.net/10012/20569 (external link) 

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.