I am an assistant professor at the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs at Carleton University. My research focuses on the intersection of forced migration, local governance, and the politics of borders, with a regional focus on the Middle East. 

I was previously a postdoctoral fellow at Perry World House, University of Pennsylvania, and a SSHRC-postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University and University of Pennsylvania. I received my PhD from the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto. In 2018-2019, I was a pre-doctoral fellow with the Middle East Initiative at Harvard Kennedy School of Government's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. 

My research has been supported by a number of institutions and agencies, including the Harvard Kennedy School’s Middle East Initiative, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), the Ontario Graduate Scholarship, and a University of Toronto Chancellor’s Fellowship, as well as by project and issue-specific grants from the Project on Middle Eastern Political Science (POMEPS), and the American Political Science Association’s First Generation Scholar’s Initiative. My work has been published in both academic and public outlets, including the Journal of Refugee Studies, Middle East Law and Governance, Forced Migration Studies, the European Journal of International Relations as well as The Atlantic, Lawfare, The Washington Post, The Toronto Star, and Le Devoir.

To learn more about my research, please contact me at lama.mourad [at] carleton.ca, or find me on twitter.