Researchers

Dr. Michael Akladios

Founder and Executive Director, Egypt Migrations

Research interests: Global Middle East, modern Egypt; immigration and Ethnicity in North America; Cold War international relations; Religious history; transnationalism and diaspora; Gender, race and racism.

Email me at michaelakladios@gmail.com

Dr. Febe Armanios

Professor of History and Co-Director of Humanities, Middlebury College

Research interests: Coptic Studies in Ottoman and Modern Egypt; Pentecostal and charismatic history and practices in Egypt; missionaries; Christian communities in the Middle East; comparative Muslim-Christian religious practices; women’s studies; media studies; food studies.

Email me at farmanios@middlebury.edu

Weston Bland

PhD. Candidate, Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, University of Pennsylvania

Research interests: Modern Egypt and communal histories in the modern Middle East, with an emphasis on the development of institutions in the modern Coptic community.

Email me at wbland@sas.upenn.edu

Amy Fallas

PhD. Candidate, History, University of California, Santa Barbara
Grad Assistant, Center for Middle East Studies

Research Interests: Modern Middle East History; modern Egypt; Coptic studies; global Christianity and comparative empire.

Email me at amyfallas@ucsb.edu

Dr. Angie Heo

Assistant Professor of the Anthropology and Sociology of Religion, University of Chicago Divinity School

Research Interests: Religion, media, and economy; the critical study of global Christianities in the modern world; everyday religious practices; colonial and national institutions of rule; political economies of development and globalization.

Email me at heo@uchicago.edu

Mina Ibrahim

Founder, Shubra’s Archive for Research & Development (SARD)
Researcher, MENA Prison Forum

Research Interests: Moral lives and complexities of religious minorities in Middle East; cultures and histories of imprisonment and torture in the Arab World.

Email me at mina.ibrahim@gcsc.uni-giessen.de

Dr. Candace Lukasik

Postdoctoral Fellow, John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics, Washington University in St. Louis

Research interests: race and racialization; migration, transnationalism, and diaspora; sectarianism and religious violence; political theology and geopolitics; U.S. empire and the War on Terror.

Email me at cblukasik@wustl.edu

Dr. Safwat Marzouk

Associate Professor of Old Testament, Union Presbyterian Seminary

Research interests: Thinking theologically about monsters in the Bible, Ancient Near East, and popular culture; Constructing the Other in the Old Testament; Middle Eastern Christian Hermeneutics; and Immigration and the Bible.

Email me at smarzouk@upsem.edu

Dr. Elizabeth Monier

Research Fellow in Middle Eastern Studies, University of Cambridge

Research interests: The contemporary history and politics of the Middle East; Eastern Christians, sectarianism, identity politics; the history of political concepts; nation-state building and national belonging.

Email me at ei211@cam.ac.uk

Helene Moussa

Ed.D Sociology of Education, Museum Studies; Volunteer Curator, Coptic Museum of Canada; Secretary, Board of Directors, Canadian Society for Coptic Studies

Research Interests: Culture & social identity; education and museology; refugees policy & experience; Coptic art, social identity & agency; museums as research hubs.

Email me at moussahelene8@gmail.com

Miray Philips

PhD Candidate in Sociology at the University of Minnesota; Visiting Research Fellow at Johns Hopkins’ School of Advanced International Studies.

Research interests: Religious freedom and human rights; knowledge and representation; collective memory and cultural trauma; ethno-religious minorities; diaspora.

Email me at phili191@umn.edu

Dr. Carolyn M. Ramzy

Associate Professor of Ethnomusicology, Carleton University; Supervisor of Ensemble and Masterclasses

Research interests: Musics of the Middle East; Coptic Christian popular music; performative politic of citizenship and belonging; music and religion; neo-Pentecostal and charismatic worship movement; gender and religious subjectivities; satellite and digital ministries; mediated and autotuned voice; sectarian conflicts; post/colonial music discourses and scholarship.

Email me at carolyn.ramzy@carleton.ca

Dr. Gaétan Du Roy

Université Saint-Louis, Brussels

Research Interests: Contemporary History; Oral History; Ethnography; Urban History; Religious minorities; Middle East studies; methodology and historiography.

Email me at gaetan.duroy@gmail.com

Dr. Paul Sedra

Associate professor of History, Simon Fraser University

Research Interests: Modern Egypt; Christian-Muslim relations; Canadian policy in the Middle East; social history; Middle East politics.

Email me at pdsedra@sfu.ca

Dr. Heather J. Sharkey

Professor of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, Department of Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations, University of Pennsylvania

Research interests: History of the Christian, Muslim, and Jewish worlds; imperialism, colonialism, post-colonialism, and nationalism; Christian missions; language politics and literacy; food studies.

Email me at hsharkey@sas.upenn.edu