Dr Laurence Lessard-Phillips is Associate Professor in the Department of Social Policy, Sociology and Criminology at the University of Birmingham, where she a member of the Institute for Research into International Migration and Superdiversity (IRIS). Her research sits at the intersection of migration, ethnicity, inequality and social policy, with a particular focus on migrant integration, superdiversity, vulnerability, education, wellbeing, and public understandings of migration. Her approach is interdisciplinary and methodologically plural, drawing on a wide variety of methods applied to broad domains of migrant inclusion and exclusion across different institutional and policy contexts.
Dr Lessard-Phillips completed her DPhil in Sociology at the University of Oxford in 2009, following an MSc in Sociology at Oxford and a BA from McGill University. Her doctoral research focused on the educational attainment of the second generation in Britain and Canada, establishing a long-standing interest in how migration, ethnicity and opportunity structures shape life chances. Before joining the University of Birmingham, she held research positions at the University of Manchester (2010-2016) and at the Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute (NIDI, 2009-2010), contributing to, and leading, work on migration, integration and diversity.
Across her career, Dr Lessard-Phillips has led and contributed to a wide range of externally funded projects supported by organisations including the Nuffield Foundation, ESRC, Horizon Europe, to only name a few. She has served as principal investigator on projects examining vulnerable migrants and wellbeing (Nuffield Foundation); inclusion and immigrant adaptation in Britain (ESRC), and as co-investigator or work package lead on projects concerning Brexit (ESRC), irregular migration (Horizon Europe), school mobility (Nuffield Foundation) and financial insecurity among migrants at end of life (Marie Curie Cancer Care). More recent work focuses includes comparative European research on public attitudes to irregular migration (I-CLAIM), as well as work on school mobility and educational inequality (MOVES).
She has published extensively in leading journals, including International Migration Review, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Sociology, Ethnicities, Social Science Computer Review and Public Health, and has contributed to edited volumes and handbooks on superdiversity, education, citizenship and migration. She has regularly engaged with non-academic stakeholders through the publication reports and blogs, as well as participation at policy events, invited talks and collaborative knowledge exchange activities.
In addition to her research, Dr Lessard-Phillips has substantial experience in postgraduate teaching, doctoral supervision and academic leadership. She has supervised doctoral researchers on topics spanning migration, integration, citizenship, inequality, refugee policy, race and ethnicity, education and employment. She has taught a wide range of modules in applied social research, inequality and social policy at various institutions. She currently serves as Head of Postgraduate Research in the School of Social Policy and Society at Birmingham and has held a number of additional leadership and editorial roles, including Acting Co-Director of IRiS, membership of the Educational Review editorial board, and grant reviewing and examining roles for UK and international funders and institutions.