Dr. Lisa Gilman who took over leadership of the Institute for Immigration Research in August 2025, comes to the IIR with a long-standing commitment to understanding how people navigate social and political life through arts and culture. Trained as a folklorist with a minor in African Studies at Indiana University, Dr. Gilman has spent her academic career examining the intersections of art, power, and everyday experience—particularly in contexts shaped by migration, displacement, war, and conflict.
Across decades of research conducted in multiple countries, a consistent thread has guided her work: what happens when people from different cultural backgrounds live together and how do they use expressive forms—music, storytelling, food, performance—to make sense of their environments. Rather than treating culture as secondary to politics or economics, Dr. Gilman approaches it as central to how people experience social life, including withinmoments of profound instability.
Today, this perspective informs her leadership at IIR. Anyone who has spent enough time in academia knows that director roles are demanding and often involve invisible labor. In our interview, Dr. Gilman reflected that it would have been easier to remain focused exclusively on her own research and teaching. However, the IIR position appealed to her because it offered an opportunity to expand the reach and impact of scholarship beyond academic audiences. “I’ve always been aware of the limits of research that stays within the university,” she notes. “The directorship role allows me to think about how research can circulate more widely and be useful to people making decisions in real time.”
One of Dr. Gilman’s central priorities at IIR is to improve how immigration research is disseminated. She points to the Institute’s long-standing Immigration Data on Demand (iDoD) project. Already widely used by educators, nonprofit organizations, and local advocates, iDod is a great example of the kind of work she hopes to expand. Moving forward, Dr. Gilman plans to take a more proactive approach, increasing the visibility and access of iDod to policymakers and community leaders. Dr. Gilman notes that access is not guaranteed simply because research exists. For information to matter, “it must circulate in forms that are legible to different audiences and reach people at moments when decisions are being made.” An example of this effort, this year, the Institute will begin producing regular immigration fact sheets for elected officials in Virginia, designed to inform policy conversations as they happen.
This emphasis on accessibility connects directly to another defining feature of Dr. Gilman’s vision: the idea that data-driven research and arts, culture, and storytelling are deeply interconnected research foci. While policy discussions often privilege economics, law, or health outcomes, Dr. Gilman argues that culture is already embedded in all of these domains. Storytelling, aesthetics, and narratives shape how people understand information, form opinions, and relate to one another.
At IIR, this narrative approach translates into treating data itself as a form of storytelling. “Even an iDoD factsheet tells a story,” Dr. Gilman states. Maps, charts, color, and visual design are not neutral containers for information; they guide interpretation and meaning. At the same time, the stories of individual people and communities can illuminate the lived realities behind aggregate trends. Together, data and storytelling offer a more complete picture of immigration as both a structural and human experience.
Dr. Gilman is also excited about IIR’s potential to serve as a hub for immigration-related work across George Mason University. While significant research, teaching, and creative projects are already underway across campus (from economics and public policy to the arts and humanities), much of this work remains fragmented. By building IIR as a clearinghouse, it can help make this scholarship more visible and connect university research with broader public audiences and foster collaboration across campus. As a part of this work, Dr. Gilman initiated a research network on immigrant-related research in the DMV area. The goal of this network is to create mechanism for researchers to share information with one another, foster collaborations, and support and reinforce one another’s work.
Underlying all of this is a collaborative approach rooted in Dr. Gilman’s training in public folklore. Rather than conducting research about communities, she emphasizes working with them. This orientation shapes not only how research is conducted, but also how its outcomes are shared and used. For Dr. Gilman, leadership is less about directing from above than about creating structures that allow meaningful collaboration to happen. It involves listening, translating across fields and audiences, and ensuring that knowledge moves in ways that are ethical, accessible, and responsive to lived experience. As IIR continues to grow under her direction, that approach offers a clear framework for how research, culture, and public engagement can be mutually reinforcing.
February 09, 2026