Jack Fairey holds an undergraduate degree in History from Simon Fraser University (Vancouver, B.C.) and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in Modern Balkan and Ottoman History from the University of Toronto. His doctoral dissertation, "The Great Game of Improvements: Religious Reform and European Imperialism in the Eastern Mediterranean" (2004), examines the competing efforts of British, French, Russian, and Austrian diplomats to control the nature and speed of secularizing reforms among the Orthodox Christian and other non-Muslim communities of the Ottoman Empire during the mid-nineteenth century. His research interests include the post-Byzantine history of the Orthodox Church, the Ecumenical Patriarchate, and European diplomacy in the Near East. He has previously taught modern Greek history at York University in Toronto.  [Last Updated 2006]