Centre for Transnational Mennonite Studies

Current Fellows

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Jonathan Hildebrand
Plett Foundation PhD Fellow

Jonathan Hildebrand is a PhD student in History at the University of Manitoba. With a background in History and in Urban Planning, he is currently pursuing research interests in environmental history, immigration, cultural history, and Indigenous-settler issues.

Jonathan's doctoral research includes a focus on waterways and Mennonite settlement in the 'West Reserve' area of southern Manitoba.

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Shelisa Klassen
Plett Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow

Shelisa Klassen recently completed her PhD in History at the University of Manitoba, focusing on the process of establishing settler colonialism in Manitoba in the 1870s through immigration and control over land. Looking at local print media as the outward expression of settler anxieties about the identity of the new province, this research contributes to the history of newspapers, immigration, and settler colonialism in Canada. Shelisa's research interests also include ethnic Mennonite immigration and Indigenous-settler dynamics in Manitoba.

Shelisa's Plett Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship research connects the newspaper coverage of Indigenous peoples and Mennonites and other immigration concerns in Manitoba with the larger imperial press as a settler colonial institution.

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Arnoldo Vázquez Gómez
Plett Foundation Short-Term Fellow

Arnoldo Vázquez Gómez is a doctoral student in history at the Autonomous University of Mexico City – Xochimilco. His research explores the history of Mennonite settlement in northern Mexico. His MA thesis, from the Autonomous University of Sinaloa, explored the role of railways and diplomacy in the initial migration of Mennonites to northern Mexico. His current PhD project is an examination of the how Mennonite businesses in the “commercial corridor” around Ciudad Cuauhtémoc responded to the structural changes resulting from the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement as that region became one of the fastest growing poles of development in the state of Chihuahua.

Arnoldo is based at CTMS as completes his dissertation, incorporating new materials from local archives and libraries.

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Melanie Kampen

CTMS Postdoctoral Fellow

Melanie is a queer white Mennonite settler living on traditional Indigenous lands known as Manitou-Ahbee. She completed her PhD in Theology in 2019 at Emmanuel College at the University of Toronto. Her research focuses on the neglect of sexual and colonial violence in primarily white settler Mennonite theologies and communities. Melanie specializes in Mennonite feminist theologies, Christian ethics, trauma theory, and critical social theories.

Our Next Annual Conference

The Russlaender Mennonites

War, Dislocation, and New Beginnings


July 14–15, 2023

University of Winnipeg and Livestream