Dr. Anna Sheftel

Biography

Dr. Anna Sheftel has a DPhil in Modern History and an MSc in Forced Migration from the University of Oxford. She did her BA at Concordia in Linguistics. Prior to her appointment at Concordia, she was an Associate Professor of Conflict Studies and Vice-Dean of the Faculties of Human Sciences and Philosophy at Saint Paul University in Ottawa. Her fields of expertise are oral history of genocide, atrocity, migration and activism, as well as oral ethics and practice. 

Notable projects include the collaborative audio tour, Refugee Boulevard: Making Montreal Home After the Holocaust, which won both the 2020 Oral History Association (OHA) and Canadian Historical Association (CHA) Digital and Public History prizes.

She has also published extensively on oral history methodology, ethics and pedagogy, with a focus on collaborative and community-engaged practices and listening to difficult stories. She is internationally recognized for these publications, most notably for Oral History Off the Record: Toward an Ethnography of Practice (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), co-edited with Stacey Zembrzycki, which won the OHA’s 2014 Book Award, and for her article, “Talking and Not Talking about Violence: Challenges in Interviewing Survivors of Atrocity as Whole People,” which won the OHA’s 2019 Article Award. She is active in her professional association and in her community, and she currently serves on the OHA Council. 

Currently, Dr. Sheftel is working on several projects, including: a SSHRC-funded project about Back River cemetery as a site of memory and intercultural encounter; a SSHRC-funded project examining the evolution of Holocaust commemoration institutions from the perspectives of Holocaust survivors themselves; and a SSHRC-funded project working to capture migration dynamics and grassroots organizing from a bottom-up perspective across New York, New England and Montreal.

Courses Taught

SCPA 301 - Social Debates and Issues in Public Affairs and Public Policy

Supervision

I supervise MA and PhD students in the Department of History, the INDI program and the Humanities program. I am interested in taking on grad students working in oral and public history, memory of violence and activism, Canadian Jewish history, Holocaust Studies, and migration and refugee narratives. 

Current Grants

Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), $200 000, 2025-2028

Partnership Development Grant. Principal Investigator, with co-director Amy Starecheski at Columbia University:

"Pathways of Solidarity: Migrants and Migrant Support Networks Across New York, New England and Montreal."

Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), $85 000, 2023-2026

Insight Grant. Principal Investigator: “Cemetery as Metaphor: Stories of Jewish Migration and Settlement, Intercultural Encounters and Mourning at Montreal's Back River Memorial Gardens.”

Selected Media Coverage

“A love letter to Montreal's forgotten Jewish cemetery — in Ahuntsic-Cartierville,” cover story by Susan Schwartz, The Montreal Gazette, January 20, 2024: https://montrealgazette.com/news/a-love-letter-to-montreals-forgotten-jewish-cemetery-in-ahuntsic-cartierville

“Témoignages demandés pour le cimetière Back River,” by Stéphane Desjardins, Journal des Voisins, August 2, 2022: https://journaldesvoisins.com/temoignages-demandes-pour-le-cimetiere-back-river/

“Audio Tour Opens Ears to Holocaust Survivors’ Stories in Montreal,” by Rob Lurie, CTV News, September 22, 2019: https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/audio-tour-opens-ears-to-holocaust-survivors-stories-in-montreal-1.4605041

“Refugee Boulevard: New audio tour shows listeners how Holocaust survivors made Montreal Home,” CBC, September 16, 2019: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/refugee-boulevard-holocaust-survivors-montreal-1.5284715?fbclid=IwAR2Rqs_SWsUcb53ePJbzR37caAKhYFJbg8mJ_4ZQ1aagXfiImEyjCrsLFH8

 “Audio Tour Shows How Survivors Made Montreal Home,” by Janice Arnold, Canadian Jewish News, September 16, 2019: https://thecjn.ca/news/audio-tour-shows-how-survivors-made-montreal-home/

Selected Publications

Anna Sheftel and Stacey Zembrzycki, “Oral History is Not Just Data: Amplifying Humanistic Practices in the Age of Artificial Intelligence.” The Oral History Review 53:1 (Spring 2026), 4-26.

Naomi Frost and Anna Sheftel, “Oral Histories of Forced Migration and Displacement,” in M. Marinari (ed.), Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Migration Studies (Oxford University Press, 2026), https://doi.org/10.1093/9780197852699.001.0001.

Anna Sheftel, “The Interviewee’s Experience of Oral History,” in A. Freund, E. Jessee and A. Thompson (eds.), The Bloomsbury Handbook of Oral History (Bloomsbury, 2026), 41-56.

Luke Moyer and Anna Sheftel, “’…Even if They Didn’t All Go On to Great Material Success’: Neoliberalism, Resilience, and Holocaust Survivors.” The Journal of Holocaust Research (2026), 1-17.

Cyril Adonis and Anna Sheftel (eds.), Memory at the Intersection of Mass Violence and Socio-Economic Inequality. Special issue of Memory Studies. Memory Studies 18:6 (December 2025). 

Anna Sheftel, “’We Tried to Become Normal’: Social Class and Memory in Oral Histories with Montreal Holocaust Survivors.” Special issue of Memory Studies, entitled, “Memory at the Intersection of Mass Violence and Socio-Economic Inequality, co-edited by Anna Sheftel and Cyril Adonis. Memory Studies 18:6 (December 2025): 1640-1654.

Nancy Rebelo, Anna Sheftel, Stacey Zembrzycki with Eszter Andor, “Bringing Survivors’ Postwar Stories to Montreal’s Streets: The Making of Refugee Boulevard, a Multimedia Project.” Oral History Journal 53:1(Spring 2025): 99-110.

Anna Sheftel and Stephen Yeager, “In the Belly of the Beast: Service and the Future of the Public Humanities.” Public Humanities 1 (2025): https://doi.org/10.1017/pub.2024.24.

Naomi Frost and Anna Sheftel, “’The People Who Stayed’: Back River  Memorial Gardens Cemetery as a site of Jewish Migrant and Montreal Urban  Meaning-Making.” Urban History Review 52:2 (Fall 2024): 339-361. 

Anna Sheftel, “Kaddish for Unasked Questions: On Interviewing my Father.” Holocaust Studies, Special issue: A Festschrift in Honour of Henry (Hank) Greenspan (Fall 2024): 1-13. 

lacey boudreau, Angela Brunet, Samm Reid, Joshua “jay” Sallos and Anna Sheftel, “Listening Beyond: Collaborative Reflections on Learning about Activism through an Undergraduate Oral History and Podcasting Project.” The Oral History Review 51:2 (2024), 399-425.