Candace Lukasik

Candace Lukasik is an Assistant Professor of Religion and Anthropology at Mississippi State University and a former Postdoctoral Research Associate at the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics at Washington University in St. Louis. She earned her PhD in Sociocultural Anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley, and her research examines the intersections of religion, race, migration, and empire. Her first book manuscript, entitled Martyrs and Migrants: Coptic Christians and the Persecution Politics of U.S. Empire, ethnographically examines how American conservative politicization of Middle Eastern Christians has shaped collective memory, patterns of transnational migration, and inter-communal solidarities.