Research Agenda
My research examines how international migration shapes the relationship between individuals, communities, and institutions across North America and the global Middle East. I am especially interested in immigrants and their descendants, and how ordinary people negotiate settlement, integration, and belonging within changing political and social environments. Their choices are shaped and often constrained by government immigration and settlement policies, debates over multiculturalism, access to education and labour markets, and the community institutions migrants build over time. These questions have led me from the study of Egyptian and Coptic migration to broader work on diaspora and transnationalism, community memory, minority–majority relations, generational change, and the uneven social and economic adaptation of newcomers.
Methodologically, my work is grounded in oral and public history, sustained community-engaged fieldwork, and extensive archival research in Canada, the United States, and Egypt. Drawing on scholarship across history and the social sciences, I connect individual and community experiences to the larger institutional, political, and geopolitical forces that shape everyday life. Over time, this has drawn my research more directly toward questions of political activism, nationalism across borders, foreign relations, and Canada’s place within twentieth- and twenty-first-century developments linking North America and the Middle East.
Across my projects, I am interested in historically grounded explanations of how migration, public policy, institutions, and transnational ties inform contemporary questions of integration, citizenship, diversity, and belonging.
Book Projects in Progress
Ordinary Copts: Ecumenism, Activism, and Belonging in North American Cities
McGill-Queen’s University Press, forthcoming
Drawing on fifty oral histories alongside Canadian, American, Egyptian, ecclesiastical, and immigrant archival collections, Ordinary Copts traces Coptic migration from Egypt to Canada and the United States after the 1952 Free Officers Revolution. The book follows migrants through settlement, acculturation, and institutional development in North American cities, showing how Copts pursued integration while preserving a distinctive ethnoreligious identity and sustained ties to Egypt. In doing so, it places everyday immigrant experience within broader histories of multiculturalism, minority belonging, political activism, and Cold War relations between North America and the Middle East.
Egyptian Americans: History, Culture, and Experiences
Bloomsbury Academic, forthcoming
The first comprehensive reference text dedicated to the history, culture, and evolving identities of Egyptian Americans, this book brings together archival research, oral histories, census data, and personal narratives to document how individuals and families from Egypt have navigated life in the United States across generations. It examines how Egyptians adapted socially and economically, built institutions, negotiated racial and religious identities, and maintained transnational ties to Egypt. Designed for students, educators, researchers, and general readers, it offers an accessible yet critically engaged account of a community whose contributions remain largely overlooked in both scholarship and public discourse.
Edited Volumes
Book Chapters
Peer-Reviewed Articles
Open Access Collaborations
Contributor, Confronting Canadian Migration History (2019) – which assembles in one volume fifteen texts published on ActiveHistory.ca over the last four years that highlight the commitment of their authors to an engaged, public-facing scholarly practice in Migration Studies.
Contributor, The Canadian Immigration History Syllabus (2019), which brings together key themes, readings, sources, and questions in the history of migration to, from, and within Canada, offering a resource to educators and students and valuable historical context for contemporary debates.
Reports & Book Reviews
“Coptic Orthodox Christians,” World Religions and Spirituality Project, last modified August 1, 2025, https://wrldrels.org/2025/07/30/coptic-orthodox-christians/.
“Egypt Migrations,” International Works Section, Oral History Journal 50.1 (Spring 2022) 24-25 (report).
Michael Akladios, PhD. 