Canan Şahin (she/her) is a Postdoctoral Fellow with the UnborderED Knowledge project at Saint Mary’s University, where her work focuses on Academic Integration. She holds a PhD in Political Studies from Queen’s University. Her doctoral research developed a historical-materialist analysis of forced displacement governance and racialized labour in Turkey. Her research examines forced migration, labour, and state formation, with particular attention to how the racialization of forcibly displaced populations produces stratified labour markets and conditions of surplus and disposability. Canan has also worked as an independent program evaluator in Canada, conducting community-engaged research with resettled refugees and newcomer-serving organizations. Her broader interests include refugee and migrant justice, the political economy of displacement, and collaborative approaches to knowledge production with displaced communities.

Anastasiia Mykolenko is a Postdoctoral Fellow with UnborderED Knowledge, hosted by World University Service of Canada (WUSC). She is completing a PhD in anthropology from the Université de Montréal. She also holds an LL.M. in European Law from the College of Europe, following law studies in Kharkiv, Ukraine. Her doctoral research, based on 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork, examined displacement, humanitarian infrastructure, and uncertainty at the Polish-Ukrainian border. During her doctorate, she worked as a protection assistant with Première Urgence Internationale in Przemyśl and coordinated research on forced displacement in Moldova, Romania, and Poland. Originally from Horlivka, in the Donetsk region of Ukraine, she brings a personal lived experience of displacement to this work. At UnborderED, she contributes to research on access to higher education for refugee and displaced youth in Canada. She also serves as Executive Coordinator of the Canadian Anthropology Society (CASCA).