As an associate professor at York, McGrath sat on the Board of Directors for the Canadian Centre for Victims of Torture during their 2000–01 fiscal year.
Under this title, she also served as president of the International Association for the Study of Forced Migration and chaired the Board of the Canadian Centre for Victims of Torture.
Her work was recognized by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council with the 2015 Impact Award for Partnership.
[5] During the 2017–18 academic year, McGrath was the recipient of a $25,000 SSHRC Grant for her project "Connecting Emerging Scholars and Practitioners to Foster Critical Reflections and Innovation on Migration Research.
"[6] In September 2019, McGrath published her co-edited book "Mobilizing global knowledge: refugee research in an age of displacement" through the University of Calgary Press.