Dustin J. Byrd
is an Associate Professor of Religion, Philosophy, and Arabic at Olivet College, in Michigan, USA. He is a specialist in the Critical Theory of Religion, the Frankfurt School, and contemporary Islamic thought. He has recently published a monograph entitled Islam in a Post-Secular Society: Religion, Secularity and the Antagonism of Recalcitrant Faith (Brill, 2016), as well as Unfashionable Objections to Islamophobic Cartoons: L’affaire Charlie Hebdo (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2017). Recently he co-edited the book Ali Shariati and the Future of Social Theory: Religion, Revolution, and the Role of the Intellectual (Brill, 2017, with Seyed Javad Miri).
Ciarunji Chesaina
is a Professor of Literature at the University of Nairobi. She holds a PhD and Master of Arts in Literature from the University of Leeds. She also holds a Master of Education degree in Child Psychology from Harvard University. Professor Chesaina has published widely in Literature and Women’s Studies. Her books include Oral Literature of the Kalenjin (East African Publishers, 1991), Oral Literature of the Embu and Mbeere (East African Publishers, 1997), Joy Comes in the Morning (The Asis Publishers, 2017), and Run Gazelle Run (The Asis Publishers, 2018). Currently, she is working on a novel entitled Diazipporah and a critical work entitled Cultural Dimensions of the Proverb.
Hiba Ghanem
has recently earned her Doctorate from Lancaster University, UK. She currently teaches Comparative Literature and English Literature at the Lebanese University. Her research focuses on the concept of justice in Middle Eastern and World Literature. She is the author of “The 2011 Egyptian Revolution Chants: A Romantic-Mu’tazili Moral Order” in The British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies.
Mladjo Ivanovic
is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Northern Michigan University. His research focuses on moral, political and environmental challenges tied with the forceful displacement and migration of people, particularly by examining both the sociohistorical and environmental contexts of human vulnerability and exclusion (contexts such as gender, race, poverty, violence, colonialism, environmental degradation, climate change, etc.). He is also engaged with NGO communities in Serbia, Greece and Turkey, and serves as an advisor for
Masumi Hashimoto Odari
is a Senior Lecturer and Chairperson in the Department of Literature at the University of Nairobi. She holds a Master of Arts and PhD in Literature from the University of Nairobi. She is also an Advocate of the High Court of Kenya as well as a Member of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators. Dr. Odari has published widely in various international journals. Her books include Daisaku Ikeda and Africa: Reflections by Kenyan Writers (Nairobi University Press, 2001, co-edited with Henry Indangasi), Daisaku Ikeda and Voices for Peace from Africa (Kenya Literature Bureau, 2008, co-edited with Henry Indangasi), and Value Creating Education in Kenya: Building a Humane Society (Kenya Literature Bureau, 2018, co-edited with Henry Indangasi and Anna Mwangi).
Arjuna Parakrama
is Senior Professor of English and Cadre Chair at the University of Peradeniya. Before this he was Dean/Arts at Colombo University where he taught for over 15 years. He has published widely on language standardization and the politics of language, subaltern studies, Lankan English and teaching English in Sri Lanka, conflict transformation and discourse theory. He has been awarded a Guggenheim research grant, as well as senior fellowships from the Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs, and the US Institute of Peace. He was a Fulbright New Century Scholar in 2007/8.
JM. Persánch
has graduated with two BAs in English and Hispanic Philology at the University of Cádiz, where he later received his first Ph.D. in Comparative U.S. Latino Studies with distinctions. Whilst he was graduating, he studied abroad at the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom and he was an instructor of Spanish and non-degree seeking student at Amherst College in the United States. He later received his second Ph.D. in Peninsular Studies at the University of Kentucky. He is currently a visiting Assistant Professor of Spanish at Western Oregon University, Editor of Nuestra Andalucía, an external reviewer for academic journals, Founding Director and Presenter of the Persona, Personae Interview Series Project and Community Outreach Project Director.
Andrew Ridgeway
is a graduate student studying English literature at the University of Vermont, where his research examines rhetoric, affect and circulation through the lens of Marxist psychoanalysis.
was born in Frankfurt a.M, Germany. He studied history, philosophy, psychology, sociology, theology at the University of Frankfurt, the University of Mainz the University of Münster, and the Catholic University of America, Washington D.C. Siebert created and is a specialist in the critical theory of religion, or dialectical religiology. He has taught, lectured and published widely in Western and Eastern Europe, the United States and Canada, Israel and Japan. He is a Professor of Religion and Society, Founder and Director of the Center for Humanistic Future Studies at Western Michigan University, Founder and Director of the 42-year-old international course on the Future of Religion in the IUC, Dubrovnik, Croatia, and Founder and Director of the 20-year-old international course on Religion in Civil Society, in Yalta, Republic of Crimea. Siebert has written 30 books and 500 articles. His major works are the three-volume Manifesto of the Critical Theory of Society and Religion: The Wholly Other, Liberation, Happiness, and the Rescue of the Hopeless (Brill, 2010), From Critical Theory to Political Theology: Personal Autonomy and Universal Solidarity (Peter Lang, 1994) and The Critical Theory of Religion: Frankfurt School (Mouton De Gruyter, 1985).
Esmaeil Zeiny
is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Malaysian and International Studies (IKMAS), National University of Malaysia (UKM). He has received his PhD in Postcolonial Literature in English from the National University of Malaysia. His research interests lie at the intersection of literary studies, political theory, and cultural studies. His work addresses questions about identity, representation, colonialism and postcolonialism. He has recently co-edited Seen and Unseen: Visual Cultures of Imperialism (Brill, 2018, with Sanaz Fotouhi) and Reconstructing Historical Memories (UKM Press, 2018, with Richard Mason).