Education

• Ph.D, Anthropology, University of Chicago, 2017
• M.A., Anthropology, University of Chicago, 2011
• B.A., Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley, 2007

Areas of Research and Teaching

• Anthropology of Religion
• Theology and Social Theory
• Religion and Nationalism
• Religion, Law, and Politics
• Minority Rights
• Diaspora and Migration
• Ritual and Liturgy
• Affect and Soundscapes
• Secularism
• Religion and the Environment
• Ottoman Empire and the Republic of Turkey
• Orthodox Christianity
• Armenian Studies
• Anthropology of Europe

Research Interests

Dr. Christopher Sheklian is an Anthropologist of Religion, specializing in the relationship between religious traditions and contemporary legal and political forces.

He received his PhD in Anthropology from the University of Chicago in 2017 with his dissertation, “Theology and the Community: The Armenian Minority, Tradition, and Secularism in Turkey.” His published work explores the role of liturgy and law in the lives of religious minorities, migration and emplacement, and the question of secularism in relation to religious minority rights. Currently, he is working on a monograph, Liturgical Rights: Armenian Christian Minority Presence in Turkey.

Dr. Sheklian's work combines an ethnographic approach to religion grounded in the discipline of anthropology with a deep engagement with the Armenian Christian tradition. He is an ordained deacon of the Armenian Apostolic Church and serves as the editor of the St. Nersess Theological Review, the first English-language journal dedicated to Armenian theology.

Selected Publications

2024 Stational Liturgy and the Minority Right to the City. City & Society. https://doi.org/10.1111/ciso.12494

2023 The Liturgical Subject of the Armenian Apostolic Church: Recent waves of migration. In Talar Chahinian, Sossie Kasbarian, and Tsolin Nalbantian, eds., The Armenian Diaspora and Stateless Power: Collective Identity in the Transnational 20th Century, pp. 148-172. London: Bloomsbury/I.B. Tauris.

2022 The Problem-Space of Secularism in the Early Turkish Republic. In Barlow der Mugrdechian, Ümit Kurt, and Ara Sarafian, eds., The State of the Art of the Early Turkish Republic: Historiography, Sources, and Future Directions, pp. 83-134. Fresno, CA: The Press at California State University, Fresno.

2022 “Their Compatriot St. Servatius”: Armenian Emplacement in Maastricht. In Martin Tamcke, ed., Europe and the migration of Christian communities from the Middle East, pp. 111-124. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag.

2019 Promises of Property: Religious Foundations and the Justice and Development Party’s Ambiguous Attitudes Towards Religious Minorities.Turkish Studies 20(3):403-420.