The Khayrallah Center is pleased to announce the winners of the 2025 Alixa Naff Prize in Migration Studies, which is awarded to individuals with outstanding scholarly work from any discipline focusing on Middle East migrations, refugees, and diasporas. This year, the selection committee, comprised of Jumana Bayeh, Lucia Carminatti, Akram Khater, Devi Mays, and Jacob Norris, awarded three prizes and one honorable mention from a strong group of applicants.
| Award | Winner | Author |
|---|---|---|
| Best Book | Martyrs and Migrants | Dr. Candace Lukasik |
| Best Graduate Paper | Feeding Hope Under Fire: Memory, Displacement and the Politics of Migrant Solidarities in Lebanon | Sonia Caballero Pradas |
| Best Scholarly Paper | Premium or Penalty? Occupations and Earnings of Ottoman Immigrants and Their Offspring in the United States, 1900–1940 | Dr. Rami Zalfou Prof. Martin Dribe |
| Book Honorable Mention | Island and Empire | Dr. Uğur Peçe |
Book Prize Winner: Dr. Candace Lukasik
Candace Lukasik’s Martyrs and Migrants is an outstanding and field-defining contribution to migration studies for its bold conceptual innovation, methodological rigor, and profound empirical insight into the entanglements of religion, race, and empire. Drawing on rich, multi-sited ethnographic research, Lukasik reframes Coptic migration not simply as movement across borders, but as a deeply theopolitical process shaped by what she terms an “economy of blood,” in which narratives of martyrdom, persecution, and kinship are mobilized across transnational scales.
By situating Coptic diasporic life within the intersecting forces of U.S. imperial power, global Christian advocacy, and local histories of sectarianism, the book illuminates how migrants are simultaneously incorporated into and marginalized within American racial and religious orders. Lukasik’s work is theoretically sophisticated yet grounded, bridging anthropology, history, and migration studies while opening new pathways for understanding how affect, theology, and geopolitics shape diasporic identities. In doing so, Martyrs and Migrants not only advances the study of Middle East and North African diasporas but also redefines how scholars conceptualize migration in a global age of empire.
“I was stunned and deeply honored to learn that Martyrs and Migrants has received the Alixa Naff Prize in Migration Studies,” Dr. Lukasik said upon receiving the prize. “I am so grateful to the Khayrallah Center for this recognition and for its sustained commitment to advancing scholarship on Middle Eastern migration and diaspora studies. To have this work acknowledged by a Center that has helped define and nurture this field is truly meaningful.
“Based on more than a decade of research with Coptic Christians between Egypt and the United States, Martyrs and Migrants was also a personal and spiritual journey—one that took me from rural Upper Egypt to migrant communities in New York, New Jersey, and Nashville. At its heart, the book examines how Copts are made newly visible in American political and religious imaginaries as modern-day martyrs, even as they are racialized within carceral border regimes and caught within the securitized logics of the War on Terror. The lives shared throughout the book’s pages offer an intimate portrait of how Middle Eastern Christians navigate the fragile and uneven terrain of belonging. In our current moment marked by detention, displacement, and deepening infrastructures of restriction, seeing Middle Eastern Christians not only as icons of persecution but as migrants—whose journeys carry their own forms of sacrifice—feels more urgent than ever.”
Dr. Candace Lukasik is Assistant Professor of Religion and Faculty Affiliate in Anthropology and Middle Eastern Cultures at Mississippi State University. She is the author of Martyrs and Migrants: Coptic Christians and the Persecution Politics of U.S. Empire (NYU Press, 2025) and co-editor of Anthropologies of Orthodox Christianity: Theology, Politics, Ethics (Fordham University Press, 2025) and American Examples: New Conversations about Religion Volume IV (The University of Alabama Press, 2025). Candace is currently researching and writing a new book that extends her interest in the imperial politics of religious belonging by tracing how Assyrians in Iraq and in the diaspora articulate claims to sovereignty and presence through the language of indigeneity. Previously, she was a Faculty Leave Fellow at the Crown Center for Middle East Studies at Brandeis University, an AAUW American Postdoctoral Research Leave Fellow, and a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics at Washington University in St. Louis. She received her PhD in Sociocultural Anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley.
Graduate Paper Prize Winner: Sonia Caballero Pradas
Feeding Hope Under Fire by Sonia Caballero Pradas is a rigorously researched study of solidarity between migrant communities in Lebanon during a particular moment of intense upheaval and precarity, that of Israel’s war on Lebanon in 2024. Those following events in Lebanon in late 2024 heard much about Lebanese outside the southern district providing shelter to displaced southerners, but much less on how this displacement impacted migrant domestic workers or refugees from Palestine, Sudan, and Syria.
Caballero takes an original approach to an under-investigated research topic. For instance, she focuses on food preparation to highlight solidarity as both practical assistance and a form of praxis. Both scholarly literature and ethnographic data frame and inform this essay. It is well written, provides excellent critical analysis and makes a strong intervention into the field of Middle East studies and Middle East migration research.
Upon reception of the prize, Caballero responded, “Receiving the Alixa Naff Prize in Migration Studies for my article Feeding Hope under Fire has filled me with profound pride and gratitude. At the same time, it has carried me back to the sensorial world of makeshift kitchens amid armed conflict in Lebanon, where migrant domestic workers under the Kafala system, alongside Palestinian, Sudanese and Syrian refugee women, cooked tirelessly and passionately to nourish displaced families across the country. There, the rhythm of unmatching knives could not silence the brutality of the Israeli aggression, yet they created a collective refuge for those nurturing in exile and recreating flavours of a homeland some had never fully tasted. Although the structures of injustice my research traces do not encompass the full spectrum of life in Lebanon, I hope they reveal, above all, enduring practices of community and cross-border solidarity, precisely as shelters open their doors and stoves are lit again.”
Sonia Caballero Pradas is a researcher and recent graduate in Migration and Intercultural Relations at the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa (Erasmus Mundus Program). Driven by a deep curiosity connected to the Arab heritage of her native Andalusia, she studied Arabic Language and Linguistics at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, complementing her formation at Yarmouk University (Jordan), where she later remained and specialised in teaching Spanish to asylum seekers and refugees. Her Master’s thesis, carried out amidst the ongoing bombardment of Lebanon, was awarded “Most Innovative Thesis” in her cohort. She is currently working to bring that research into accessible formats for its participants, while serving as a Visiting Fellow at the Institute for Migration Studies at the Lebanese American University and as literary forum’s curator at the Cervantes Institute of Beirut, the city that has profoundly shaped both her professional path and personal life.
Scholarly Paper Prize Winner: Dr. Rami Zalfou and Prof. Martin Dribe
The paper that received the highest ranking was Dr. Rami Zalfou and Prof. Martin Dribe’s article “Premium or Penalty? Occupations and Earnings of Ottoman Immigrants and Their Offspring in the United States, 1900-1940,” published in the European Review of Economic History. This article, which draws on comprehensive American census data from the first four decades of the 20th century, explores the unique economic assimilation patterns of Ottoman immigrants — those identified as from “Turkey” analyzed separately from those from “Syria-Lebanon” — in comparison with other groups of immigrants to the United States. In doing so, this paper illuminates patterns of economic activity and attendant outcomes beyond the first generation from a macro scale, offering a unique and complementary perspective to historical studies that have focused largely on the first generation of Ottoman immigrants, those in specific occupations, in discrete regions of the United States, or on those from Syria-Lebanon or Turkey separately.
“Receiving the 2025 Alixa Naff Prize is truly meaningful to us,” Dr. Zalfou said when awarded. “Alixa Naff’s pioneering work on Arab migration fundamentally shaped how scholars understand these communities, and her commitment to documenting overlooked migrant experiences has had a lasting influence on my own research. Our study builds on that foundation by bringing new quantitative methods to the question of how Lebanese and other Ottoman-era immigrants and their descendants fared economically in the US. We also greatly admire the work of the Khayrallah Center for Lebanese Diaspora Studies and its sustained contribution to advancing rigorous, interdisciplinary scholarship on migration and diaspora. To have our work recognized by the Center that continues this intellectual legacy is both humbling and deeply encouraging.”
Rami Zalfou defended his PhD thesis in Economic History at Lund University in 2025, where he was based at the Department of Economic History, the Center for Economic Demography, and the Center for Advanced Middle Eastern Studies. His thesis, titled Borders and Pathways: Essays on Syrian Economic Development and Migrant Integration, combines economic history, migration studies, and quantitative methods to examine long-run patterns of regional inequality in Syria, and the economic and social integration of Syrian and other Middle Eastern-origin immigrants in host countries like the US and Sweden. He is currently a Senior Economist at Historic England, where he researches the economic and social value of heritage capital. This work focuses on quantifying how the built historic environment affects local economic growth, wellbeing, and place-based development, contributing to national policy appraisal and cultural capital research in the UK.
Martin Dribe is a recognized Wallenberg Scholar (2025-2029, Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation), a professor of Economic History specializing in Economic Demography, and the Director of the Center for Economic Demography. His research deals with historical and contemporary economic demography covering mortality, fertility, migration, marriage, and social mobility. It has been published in leading demography and economic history journals. His research involves longitudinal micro-level data; he is currently PI for the Scanian Economic-Demographic Database, as well as for the research environment Socioeconomic Segregation (funded by the Swedish Research Council, 2023-2029). He has taught economic history and demography at all levels, and currently teaches population-related courses at Bachelor’s and Master’s levels. He also supervises PhD candidates in economic history working in the field of economic demography.
Book Honorable Mention: Dr. Uğur Peçe
“Worse than death is refugeehood.” Loud and strong resounds Uğur Peçe’s opening whisper, borrowed from Nazım Hikmet, with which Island and Empire takes off. Writing with both levity and force, Peçe dives into the lives of not just the 70.000 Muslim Cretan refugees who had to leave the island in 1896, but also those of their Christian neighbors and of the countless other Ottomans they encountered on the way. The author thus masterfully accounts for what he intentionally refers to as a local “civil war” on the grounds of the intimacy between communities; the international/transnational origins and ripples of the ubiquitously popular “unmixing of people” tenet; the empire-wide popular mobilization that ensued.
The committee finds Island and Empire to be a masterful piece of research, carried out in an impressive range of archives and languages, set to illuminate an overlooked episode of Ottoman history as well as impact the fields of migration and refugee studies: for example, through its exploration of refugee activism, the sensory aspects of political action by apparently speechless minorities, and refugees’ key role in mass politics.
Peçe’s thoughts on this recognition are as follows: “For generations, tales of migration have permeated the collective memory of the Lebanese and others. They passed down accounts of those who embarked on journeys with trepidation and uncertainty but also with a readiness to grab life by the horns and to start anew. Children heard them as they were put to bed; friends exchanged them over coffee and sweets. It is an honor to receive this recognition for my book from the Khayrallah Center, an institution dedicated to preserving the rich tapestry of migration from the Eastern Mediterranean. I hope the readers of Island and Empire catch echoes of familiar stories from the neighboring shores of the same sea.
“In this book, I discuss why and how international policymakers forced the inhabitants of Crete to leave their native island after a civil war in the 1890s. Out of place and dispossessed, those islanders endured a life of misery on the outskirts of Ottoman cities but they also remade themselves as the drivers of a long-lasting movement of popular protest staged against the injustices of displacement. I hope Island and Empire offers a view from the past into our present moment, a time when protesters at home and abroad are raising their voices for justice, accountability, and dignity.”
Uğur Zekeriya Peçe is an Associate Professor of History at Lehigh University. Born and raised in Turkey, he received his PhD in History from Stanford University in 2016. Before teaching at Lehigh, he was a Visiting Assistant Professor in History and Middle Eastern Studies at Bard College, and a Lecturer in the History and Literature Program at Harvard. His book Island and Empire was published by Stanford University Press in 2024. Peçe is currently working on two book projects. The first one explores the sounds of the 1908 revolution in the Ottoman Empire. The second one examines Cuba and Crete in the late nineteenth century, focusing on their independence struggles against the Spanish and Ottoman empires.
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