Dr. Marshia Akbar is the Research Lead on Labour Migration with the CERC Migration and Integration program at Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU). She is also serving as the Director the CERC-BMO Newcomer Labour Force Integration Lab, which conducts action-oriented research to help companies effectively hire skilled immigrants by bridging research and practice. Marshia’s current research, focusing on international students’ transition to the labour market and integration challenges, has received the Insight Development Grants awarded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). She adopts a multi-sectoral collaborative approach in her research to bridge lived experiences of migrants with policies and practices. Additionally, she teaches in the Department of Sociology and the Chang School of Continuing Education at TMU. In 2022, she received a Teaching Award from the Faculty of Arts at Toronto Metropolitan University for her inspiring course “Immigration, Borders, and Belonging.”