Irina Isaakyan is Senior Research Associate at the Toronto Metropolitan University, Canada. Holding PhD from the University of Edinburgh, UK (2008), she has many years of university teaching and research experience in different countries, including Russia, Scotland, Italy and Canada. Her research interests include integration of skilled migrants, diaspora nationalism, elite migrations, migration and gender, interpretive research, and post-communist studies. Prior to joining the Toronto Metropolitan University, she had worked on a number of research projects at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy, exploring migrants’ integration in a variety of national settings.