Ben Nobbs-ThiessenBen Nobbs-Thiessen

Office: 3A36 Ashdown Hall
Phone: 204-786-9391
Fax: 204-774-4134
E-mail: b.nobbs-thiessen@uwinnipeg.ca

Assistant Professor of History and Mennonite Studies
Chair in Mennonite Studies
Co-director of Centre for Transnational Mennonite Studies

Degrees

  • B.A., University of British Columbia
  • M.A., University of British Columbia
  • Ph.D., Emory University

Biography (click for full bio)

Research Interests

  • Mennonite history
  • Latin American history
  • Migration
  • Environment

Courses

  • HIST-2109(3): Mennonite Studies II
  • HIST-3114(3): Latin American Mennonites

Selected Publications

  • Landscape of Migration: Mobility and Environmental Change on Bolivia’s Tropical Frontier since 1952. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2020.
  • “Re-Shaping the Chaco: Migrant Foodways, Place-Making and The Chaco War.” Journal of Latin American Studies 50:3 (2018): 579-611.
  • “The Steel Wheel: From Progress to Protest and Back Again in Canada, Mexico and Bolivia.” Agricultural History 92:2 (2018): 172-189. (Co-authored with Royden Loewen.)
  • “Cheese is Culture and Soy is Commodity: Environmental Change in a Bolivian Mennonite Colony.” ­Journal of Mennonite Studies 35 (2017): 303-328.
  • “Channeling Modernity: Nature, Patriotic Engineering and the Chaco War.” In The Chaco War: Environment, Ethnicity, Nationalism, ed. Bridget Chesterton, 67-90. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016.
  • “Mennonites in Unexpected Places: Sociologist and Settler in Latin America.” Journal of Mennonite Studies 28 (2010): 203-224.

Aileen FriesenAileen Friesen

Office: 2B16 Bryce
Phone: 204-786-9352
Fax: 204-774-4134
E-mail: ai.friesen@uwinnipeg.ca

Associate Professor of History and Mennonite Studies
Executive Director, Plett Foundation
Co-director of Centre for Transnational Mennonite Studies

Degrees

  • B.A. (Hons.), University of Manitoba
  • M.A., Carleton University
  • M.A., University of Alberta
  • Ph.D., University of Alberta

Biography (click for full bio)

Research Interests

  • Mennonite history
  • European history
  • Migration

Courses

  • HIST-2102(3) Mennonite Studies II
  • HIST-2132(3) History of Peace & Nonviolence II

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.