Dr. Anna Sheftel
- Principal, School of Community and Public Affairs
- Associate Professor, School of Community and Public Affairs
Are you the profile owner?
Sign in to editContact information
Email:
Website:
Biography
Biography
Dr. Anna Sheftel has a DPhil in Modern History and an MSc in Forced Migration from the University of Oxford. She did her BA at Concordia in Linguistics. Prior to her appointment at Concordia, she was an Associate Professor of Conflict Studies and Vice-Dean of the Faculties of Human Sciences and Philosophy at Saint Paul University in Ottawa. Her fields of expertise are oral history of genocide, atrocity, migration and activism, as well as oral ethics and practice. She has done research projects on wartime memory in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the public testimonial practices of Holocaust survivors in Montreal, Holocaust survivors who experienced sustained socioeconomic inequality in Canada, and the migration experience of survivors after World War II. She also co-developped a collaborative audio tour, Refugee Boulevard: Making Montreal Home After the Holocaust, which won both the 2020 Oral History Association (OHA) and Canadian Historical Association (CHA) Digital and Public History prizes.
She has also published extensively on oral history methodology, ethics and pedagogy, with a focus on collaborative and community-engaged practices and listening to difficult stories. She is internationally recognized for these publications, most notably for Oral History Off the Record: Toward an Ethnography of Practice (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), co-edited with Stacey Zembrzycki, which won the OHA’s 2014 Book Award, and for her article, “Talking and Not Talking about Violence: Challenges in Interviewing Survivors of Atrocity as Whole People,” which won the OHA’s 2019 Article Award. She is active in her professional association and in her community, and she currently serves as the co-chair of OHA's Advocacy Committee.
Currently, Dr. Sheftel is working on several projects, including: an oral history of the 2012 Québec student strike; a SSHRC-funded project about Back River cemetery as a site of memory and intercultural encounter; and a SSHRC-funded project examining the evolution of Holocaust commemoration institutions from the perspectives of Holocaust survivors themselves.
Teaching activities
Courses Taught
SCPA 352 - Community and Local Activism
SCPA 481 - Settlement and Integration
SCPA 482 - Field Placement in Immigration Studies
Supervision
I supervise MA and PhD students in the Department of History, the INDI program and the Humanities program. I am interested in taking on grad students working in oral and public history, memory of violence and activism, Canadian Jewish history, Holocaust Studies, and migration and refugee narratives.
Research activities
Current Grants
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), $29 990, 2024-2025
Knowledge Synthesis Grant. Principal Investigator: “The Agency of Holocaust Survivors from Commemorative Activism to Interactive Holograms.”
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), $85 000, 2023-2026
Insight Grant. Principal Investigator: “Cemetery as Metaphor: Stories of Jewish Migration and Settlement, Intercultural Encounters and Mourning at Montreal's Back River Memorial Gardens.”
Selected Media Coverage
“A love letter to Montreal's forgotten Jewish cemetery — in Ahuntsic-Cartierville,” cover story by Susan Schwartz, The Montreal Gazette, January 20, 2024: https://montrealgazette.com/news/a-love-letter-to-montreals-forgotten-jewish-cemetery-in-ahuntsic-cartierville
“Témoignages demandés pour le cimetière Back River,” by Stéphane Desjardins, Journal des Voisins, August 2, 2022: https://journaldesvoisins.com/temoignages-demandes-pour-le-cimetiere-back-river/
“Audio Tour Opens Ears to Holocaust Survivors’ Stories in Montreal,” by Rob Lurie, CTV News, September 22, 2019: https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/audio-tour-opens-ears-to-holocaust-survivors-stories-in-montreal-1.4605041
“Refugee Boulevard: New audio tour shows listeners how Holocaust survivors made Montreal Home,” CBC, September 16, 2019: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/refugee-boulevard-holocaust-survivors-montreal-1.5284715?fbclid=IwAR2Rqs_SWsUcb53ePJbzR37caAKhYFJbg8mJ_4ZQ1aagXfiImEyjCrsLFH8
“Audio Tour Shows How Survivors Made Montreal Home,” by Janice Arnold, Canadian Jewish News, September 16, 2019: https://thecjn.ca/news/audio-tour-shows-how-survivors-made-montreal-home/
Publications
Selected Publications
Naomi Frost and Anna Sheftel, “’The People Who Stayed’: Back River Memorial Gardens Cemetery as a site of Jewish Migrant and Montreal Urban Meaning-Making.” Urban History Review 52:2 (Fall 2024): 337-359.
Anna Sheftel, “Kaddish for Unasked Questions: On Interviewing my Father.” Holocaust Studies, Special issue: A Festschrift in Honour of Henry (Hank) Greenspan (Fall 2024): 1-13.
lacey boudreau, Angela Brunet, Samm Reid, Joshua “jay” Sallos and Anna Sheftel, “Listening Beyond: Collaborative Reflections on Learning about Activism through an Undergraduate Oral History and Podcasting Project.” The Oral History Review 51:2 (2024), 399-425.
Anna Sheftel, "Talking and Not Talking about Violence: Challenges in Interviewing Survivors of Atrocity as
Anna Sheftel, "Listening and Learning from Stories in the Digital World," in K. Srigley, S. Zembrzycki and F.
Anna Sheftel and Stacey Zembrzycki, "Slowing Down to Listen in the Digital Age: How New Technology
Anna Sheftel and Stacey Zembrzycki, "Who’s Afraid of Oral History? Fifty Years of Debates and Anxiety
Anna Sheftel and Stacey Zembrzycki (eds.), Oral History Off the Record: Toward an Ethnography of Practice,
Anna Sheftel and Stacey Zembrzycki, '"Questions are More Important Than Answers": Creating Collaborative Workshop Spaces with
Anna Sheftel, '"I don’t fancy history very much": Reflections on Interviewee Recruitment and Refusal in Bosnia-
Anna Sheftel and Stacey Zembrzycki, "Only Human: A Reflection on the Ethical and Methodological