Biography of Aileen
Friesen
Office: 2B16 Bryce
Phone: 204-786-9352
Fax: 204-774-4134
E-mail: ai.friesen@uwinnipeg.ca
Associate Professor, Mennonite Studies
Executive Director, Plett Foundation
Co-director of Centre for Transnational Mennonite Studies
Aileen Friesen is an Associate Professor, the Executive Director of the Plett Foundation, and the Co-director of the Centre for Transnational Mennonite Studies. She is also the editor of Preservings, an annual publication of the foundation. Her research interests include the history of Mennonites, especially their experiences in the Russian empire/the Soviet Union and Latin America; modern European history; and the history of migration in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Degrees:
- B.A. (Hons.), University of Manitoba
- M.A., Carleton University
- M.A., University of Alberta
- Ph.D., University of Alberta
Courses:
- HIST-2102(3) Mennonite Studies II
- HIST-2132(3) History of Peace & Nonviolence II
Research Interests:
- Mennonite history
- European history
- Migration
Selected Publications:
- Colonizing Russia’s Promised Land: Orthodoxy and Community on the Siberian Steppe. University of Toronto Press, 2020.
- The Russian Mennonite Story: The Heritage Cruise Lectures, by Paul Toews with Aileen Friesen. Centre for Transnational Mennonites Studies, 2018.
- “Sowers of Hatred or Prosperity: Mennonites, Faith and Collective Agriculture in Western Siberia.” Journal of Mennonite Studies 34 (2017): 287-302.
- “An Expanding Christian Empire: Archpriest Ioann Vostorgov and Russian Orthodox Missionary Aspirations in Asia.” Canadian Slavonic Papers 57, nos. 1-2 (2015): 56-75.
- “Missionary Priests’ Reports from Siberia.” In Orthodox Christianity in Imperial Russia, ed. Heather Coleman, 289-305. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2014.
- “The Case of a Siberian Sect: Mennonites and the Incomplete Transformation of Russia's Religious Structure.” Journal of Mennonite Studies 30 (2012): 137-56.
- “Assembling an Intervention: The Russian Government and the Mennonite Brethren Schism of the 1860s.” Journal of Mennonite Studies 26 (2008): 221-37.