Through our Visiting Academics Programme, we welcome academics, practitioners, and policymakers to undertake a period of self-directed research at COMPAS with the support of our academic community.
We spoke to Dr Zhixi Zhuang about her experience as one of our visiting academics and to learn more about the event she is hosting while in Oxford.
Where are you visiting from and what brings you to COMPAS?
I am a Professor at the School of Urban and Regional Planning, Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU), Canada, and serve as the Associate Director for Education and Capacity Building at TMU’s Global Migration Institute. I am also a Registered Professional Planner, and the Founder and Director of DiverCityLab – a research practice committed to working with diverse communities to address socio-spatial inequities.
In 2025, I was invited to speak at Making Migration Methodologies, an event held at the University of Oxford, where I had the great pleasure of collaborating with multidisciplinary, arts-based migration scholars from different countries. Through this experience, I was introduced to COMPAS’s extensive research networks and events addressing a wide range of topics intersecting the arts, place, cities, diversity, belonging, and integration. I also had the opportunity to learn more about COMPAS-affiliated initiatives, including its two policy and public outreach programmes, The Migration Observatory and the Global Exchange on Migration.
I have been fascinated by COMPAS’ interdisciplinary and cross-sector collaborations, especially with how research is translated into policy and community impact. Given the alignment with my own research, especially on welcoming infrastructures and migration narratives across urban, suburban, and rural settings using arts-based mixed methods, the Visiting Academics Programme offers significant scope to enrich my work.
I am also excited by the opportunity for collaboration and knowledge exchange, and to advance comparative interdisciplinary inquiry into the intersections of arts, place, migration, technology, media, creative practice, and infrastructure. In turn, I hope to contribute to innovative interdisciplinary conversations and foster research connections between Canada, COMPAS, and beyond.
Can you tell us more about your research background? What are you currently working on?
As a trained architect, urban designer, and planner, my research bridges a key divide between migration and urban planning — fields often studied separately despite their shared concern with how people negotiate space, place, and belonging. My interdisciplinary research explores immigrant settlement and integration, as well as urban transformation and governance, examining how cities shape, and are shaped by, migration. Through mixed-method, arts-informed, and community-based participatory research, I have worked closely with migrant communities, city-building professionals, and policymakers to advance more inclusive approaches to migration governance, civic engagement, and urban policymaking. As a Registered Professional Planner, my scholarship and practice address historical and ongoing inequities in knowledge, policy, and planning to ensure migrant voices and experiences remain central to decision-making.
My research has been supported by multiple grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), involving interdisciplinary and cross-sector partnerships at local, regional, national, and international levels. These ongoing projects focus on six interconnected areas: migrant integration and placemaking in suburban fringes; immigrant entrepreneurship and food security; welcoming infrastructures in small and mid-sized Canadian cities; housing for international students; equitable ageing and healthcare for older immigrants; and digital media and technology.
My scholarship has been deeply influenced by Henri Lefebvre’s (1991) theory of ‘the production of space,’ Yasminah Beebeejaun’s (2022) article on ‘race, gender, and positionality’ in urban planning research, and Ayşe Çağlar and Nina Glick Schiller’s (2018) concept of ‘migrants as active city-makers.’
Under the Migrant Integration in the Mid-21st Century: Bridging Divides research programme, one of my projects examines how physical, social, and digital infrastructures shape migration narratives, integration experiences, and belonging in Canadian cities. Using photovoice, digital story mapping, and community workshops, the project centres migrants’ voices, agency, and perspectives while exploring how welcoming infrastructures are conceived, perceived, and experienced.
Another recent project, Housing for International Students, examines the key housing challenges faced by international students in Canada and the supports available to them. The project combines interviews, surveys, policy review, and social media scraping to engage international students, multi-sector stakeholders, and online public narratives.
How do you intend to spend your time at COMPAS and around Oxford?
During my visit at COMPAS, I plan to engage with the broader research community and further develop my work on visual and digital migration narratives. I am excited to have convened the event, Art, Data & Story: The Role of ADT-Assisted and Arts-Based Approaches in Shaping Migration Narratives, which brings together researchers from Bridging Divides in Canada, COMPAS, the US, and Europe, to reflect on how data visualisation, storytelling, and creative practice can deepen our understanding of migration.
The event is free to attend and open to all, so please do join either online or in-person at Kellogg College (Register: https://forms.gle/GThBgWtsDFftjDM86).
I am also enjoying meeting with Oxford-based scholars whose work intersects with migration narratives, inclusive cities, and urban transformation, and have so far had the pleasure of engaging with migration scholars, digital humanists, artists, and data scientists, to name a few.
By leveraging the extensive networks of COMPAS and the University of Oxford, I hope to continue to develop collaborative research outputs, such as a special journal issue and/or panel discussion at a major migration studies conference – watch this space!
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If you’d like to get in touch with Dr Zhixi Zhuang about her work, please contact: zczhuang@torontomu.ca
Interested in joining COMPAS as a Visiting Academic? Find out more: https://www.compas.ox.ac.uk/study
