David Scheffel
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David Z. Scheffel, Ph.D. is associate professor of anthropology at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, British Columbia, Canada. Scheffel is the author of numerous scholarly articles and books, including In the Shadow of Antichrist (Broadview Press, 1991), a work on the Russian Orthodox breakaway Old Believers sect in Alberta.
Scheffel was born February 5th, 1955 in Prague, Czechoslovakia. He migrated with his family to Austria in 1968, where his father, a physician, worked at Innsbruck. The family later moved to Schiedam, in the Netherlands. Scheffel then moved to Canada in his twenties.
[edit] Education
Scheffel began university in Amsterdam, then continued at Cambridge University's Pembroke College in the United Kingdom. After receiving his Bachelor of Arts at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, Scheffel went on to a Master of Arts at Memorial University in St. John's, Newfoundland. His doctorate was achieved at Hamilton, Ontario's McMaster University, with a thesis on the aforementioned Old Believers.
[edit] Research & Scholarship
David Scheffel's research has spanned a wide variety of topics, including the Old Believers, the Canadian Inuit, the "Indian imitators" of the Czech Republic and the Roma (Gypsies) of Eastern Slovakia. Apart from his written work, Scheffel has also participated in three documentary films by the National Film Board of Canada. In 1993, Scheffel began coordinating a project to improve the living conditions of the Slovak Roma in the community of Svinia. The Svinia Project now incorporates Thompson Rivers University, the Canadian International Development Agency and many other organizations. The Svinia situation is also the subject of the National Film Board documentary The Gypsies of Svinia and Scheffel's most recent book, Svinia in Black and White: Slovak Roma and their Neighbours (Broadview Press, 2005).
