Neda Maghbouleh is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of British Columbia. Between 2013-2023, she worked at the University of Toronto, where she held a Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Migration, Race, and Identity from 2019-2023. She has provided expertise on race and ethnicity categories to organizations like the U.S. Census Bureau, the American Medical Association, and the Spencer Foundation. Her research on Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) communities in North America has been discussed in popular venues like NPR, The New Yorker, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and NPR’s Code Switch podcast. She holds an elected position in the Canadian Sociological Association as Chair of the Research Advisory Subcommittee. She is also Member-at-Large on the elected Council of the American Sociological Association and served on the program committees for its 2022 and 2023 Annual Meetings. She is an editorial board member of American Behavioral Scientist and Mashriq & Mahjar: Journal of Middle East and North African Migration Studies and is appointed to the Middle East Studies Association’s Committee on Anti-Racism and Anti-Discrimination.

Research Topics: Race, Racialization, Im/migration, Identity.

Research Projects: Neda studies ethnic and racial categories and identity formation as it relates to immigration and refugee resettlement. Her work is primarily underwritten by two major external awards for which she is Principal Investigator: The Province of Ontario’s Early Researcher Award ($140,000) and a SSHRC Insight Grant ($349,000). Her 2017 book, The Limits of Whiteness: Iranian Americans and the Everyday Politics of Race, published by Stanford University Press, received honors from the Association of American Publishers and the American Sociological Association (ASA). She and two collaborators, Ariela Schachter and Rene Flores, co-won ASA’s 2022 Oliver Cromwell Cox prize for their article “Ancestry, Color, or Culture: How Whites Racially Classify Others in the U.S.,” published in American Journal of Sociology. Neda is also Principal Investigator of RISE Team: Refugee Integration, Stress, and Equity, which follows 50 Syrian newcomer families over the first 5 years of their resettlement in Toronto.

Recent Publications:

Maghbouleh, Neda. In Progress. “Integration, Identity, and Racialization of Middle Eastern and North African Populations,” invited article for Annual Review of Sociology.

Maghbouleh, Neda and Laila Omar. In Progress. “Heaven without my people is not worth going to”: Syrian refugees and the infrastructure of resettlement and family reunification in Canada,” abstract accepted to special issue at Ethnic and Racial Studies.

Sharif, Mienah Z, Neda Maghbouleh (equal first authors), and Andrew Boozary. 2023. “COVID-19 Disparities among Arab, Middle Eastern, and West Asian Populations in Toronto: Implications for Improving Health Equity among Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) Communities in the United States,” Health Promotion Practice, DOI: 10.1177/15248399221142898.

Kahil, Rula, Maleeha Iqbal, and Neda Maghbouleh. 2022. “Grandmothers Behind the Scenes: Subordinate Integration, Care Work, and Power in Syrian Canadian Refugee Resettlement.” Refuge: Canada’s Journal on Refugees 38(2): 1-18.

Maghbouleh, Neda. 2022. “25 Years of Charles Mills’ Racial Contract in Sociology,” Sociology of Race and Ethnicity 8(4): 433-442.

Maghbouleh, Neda, Ariela Schachter, and René D. Flores. 2022. “Middle Eastern and North African Americans may not be perceived, nor perceive themselves to be White.” PNAS: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2117940119.

Schachter, Ariela, René D. Flores, and Neda Maghbouleh. 2021. “Ancestry, Color, or Culture? How Whites Racially Classify Others in the U.S.” American Journal of Sociology 126(5): 1220-1263.

Iqbal, Maleeha, Laila Omar, and Neda Maghbouleh. 2021. “The Fragile Obligation: Gratitude, Discontent, and Dissent with Syrian Refugees in Canada,” Mashriq & Mahjar: Journal of Middle East and North African Migration Studies 8(2) ISSN 2169-4435.

Maghbouleh, Neda. 2020. “From White to What? MENA and Iranian American non-white Reflected Race,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 43(4): 613-31.