Welcome (Marhaba)! I am an Egyptian-Canadian historian invested in using my scholarly training to create visibility for disadvantaged migrant communities. This passion led me to designing innovative lesson plans for undergraduate courses in leading educational institutions and to found Egypt Migrations, a public humanities project dedicated to archiving and promoting immigrant histories and educating future generations.
Throughout the progression of my career, I have been recognized as an empowering leader with an entrepreneurial mindset, able to capitalize on academic knowledge and subject matter expertise to enhance commitment to continuous learning and development, while leaning toward positive and strategic processes. I earned my PhD. in History from York University, Toronto. My dissertation (now first book project) was nominated for the Graduate Studies Dean’s Dissertation Prize and was supported by several competitive scholarships, including the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Doctoral Award and the Avie Bennett Historica Canada Dissertation Scholarship.
An historian of migration and transnationalism with a particular focus on 20th century Egypt, Canada, and the United States, my research critically reflects on the multipolar diasporas of Coptic Orthodox Christians. Current and future scholarship examines multiple, intersecting histories: the history of modern Egypt; Coptic Christian, Egyptian, and Arab immigrants in North America; and the Coptic Orthodox Church’s internal dynamics and relations to other Christian entities. I contribute to a sparse literature on the study of Cold War relations between the United States, Canada, and Egypt and broad issues in global Orthodoxy and Middle East politics, such as the Arab-Israeli conflict.
As the founder and executive director of Egypt Migrations (est. 2016), I lead a team of committed experts to document and disseminate knowledge about the experiences of migrants from Egypt globally. The organization has garnered international recognition and stewards the first, and only, Egyptian immigrant archival collection, housed at the Clara Thomas Archives and Special Collections at York University.
My first book project is entitled Ordinary Copts: Ecumenism, Activism, and Belonging in North American Cities, 1954-1992. The monograph details the departure, journey, settlement, and institutionalization of Coptic Orthodox Christians in an era of post-colonial nativism in Egypt and rising pluralism in Canada and the United States. The largest Christian minority in the Middle East, Copts are central to how we understand modern Egypt in global perspective. Facilitated by easing immigration policies toward professional immigrants from previously non-preferred countries, Copts who settled in central Canada and the northeastern United States went on to promote a Christian universalism to contest racialization as Middle East migrants. Portions of this argument have appeared in peer-reviewed journals, including Histoire sociale / Social History and Dalia Abdelhady & Ramy Aly eds., The Routledge Handbook on Middle Eastern Diasporas. A public-facing scholar, I have also written editorials with Active History, Mada Masr, Public Orthodoxy, and The New Arab.
Research Interests North American Immigration and Ethnicity; Diaspora & Transnationalism; Race, Gender, and Religion; Canadian & US History; Middle East Studies; Oral History; Public History; Cold War International Relations.
Michael Akladios 