Chana Algarvio is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Near & Middle Eastern Civilizations at the University of Toronto. Her dissertation focuses on Egyptian iconographic influence in the material culture of the Achaemenid Empire. It aims to establish a new understanding of the Persian practice of adapting foreign iconography, created first by Achaemenid kings, and that the Persians possessed a conscious and deep comprehension of Egyptian ideologies, advantageously reconstructed for imperial needs. Chana has received awards for her doctoral research, including the SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship (2025–2028), the Elahé Omidyar Mir-Djalali Graduate Scholarship (2025), the Ontario Graduate Scholarship (2024–2025), and the Faculty of Arts & Science Doctoral Recruitment Award (2024). Prior to her doctoral studies, Chana completed her MI in Library & Information Science and Book History & Print Culture at the University of Toronto in 2022. As a rare book librarian, she also has an interest in non-Western manuscripts and the archaeology of the book. In 2024, she curated an exhibition at the Robertson Davies Library in Massey College, “From Mauritania to Japan: Multi-materiality and Physicality of Non-Western Manuscripts,” which featured Persian manuscript leaves, amongst other things. She authored the accompanying catalogue, and has also authored articles and book chapters on Egyptian motifs in Achaemenid Persian art.
Algarvio, Chana
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