#  Candace Lukasik 

Yang Visiting Scholar in World Christianity

 

 

 



   ![Candace Lukasik headshot](/sites/g/files/omnuum5526/files/styles/hwp_4_5__320x400/public/2026-06/Candace%20Lukasik%20Photo.jpg?itok=jwD-4ddP) 

 



 

 email <clukasik@hds.harvard.edu> 

 



 

## Education

- BA, Canisius College
- MA, Columbia University
- MA, PhD, University of California, Berkeley

## Profile

Candace Lukasik is an anthropologist of religion whose research explores the transnational politics of violence, migration, race, and indigeneity among Christian communities in the Middle East—specifically Egypt and Iraq—and their US diasporas. She is the author of *Martyrs and Migrants: Coptic Christians and the Persecution Politics of US Empire* (NYU Press, 2025; winner of the [Alixa Naff Prize in Migration Studies](https://lebanesestudies.ncsu.edu/news/2026/03/02/2025-alixa-naff-prize/?fbclid=IwY2xjawQWbwxleHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETFZRUJVQ1FtR29hem9LcXpsc3J0YwZhcHBfaWQQMjIyMDM5MTc4ODIwMDg5MgABHkon1StKN-3TNPmEijIeC7-9hJ8JvN9OWBcVpPsO8TrfoJ-ioeu0YfwLSoiQ_aem_IiHllcisZKh0RnJei7tVDw)) and co-editor of *Anthropologies of Orthodox Christianity: Theology, Politics, Ethics* (Fordham University Press, 2025). Starting in fall 2027, she will be Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville.

Her current book project examines how Assyrians in Iraq and the diaspora navigate a defining tension: internationally recognized as a persecuted Christian minority, they increasingly assert themselves as an indigenous people with ancestral claims to land and presence. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Detroit and northern Iraq, it asks how the global tendency to frame Middle Eastern Christians in terms of persecution obscures longer histories of dispossession—and what Assyrian claims to indigeneity reveal about the entanglement of Christianity and rootedness across the region.

For more information, visit [Candace Lukasik's personal website](https://www.candacelukasik.com/).

## Courses

[All Harvard courses](https://my.harvard.edu/)

## Support

To reach Harvard Divinity School's faculty coordinators, email [div-faculty\_coordinators@calists.harvard.edu](mailto:div-faculty_coordinators@calists.harvard.edu).

For media inquiries or requests, please [contact Tyler Sprouse](mailto:tsprouse@hds.harvard.edu) in the Office of Communications.



 

 

 





 

 

- ## Affiliation
    
     [Faculty](/affiliation/faculty)
- ## Alpha Grouping
    
     [K-O](/alpha-grouping/k-o)
- ## Faculty Type
    
     [Visiting Faculty](/faculty-type/visiting-faculty)