Dino Abazović
is Full Professor of Sociology at the University of Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina. He also worked as the Director of the Human Rights Center of the University of Sarajevo and as the Academic Coordinator of the Religious Studies Program of the Center for Interdisciplinary Postgraduate Studies at University of Sarajevo.
He has published a number of chapters and papers in English and the South-Slavic languages, including three books in Bosnian: Bosnian Muslims between Secularization and Desecularisation (2012); Religion in Transition: Essays on Religion and Politics (2010) and For God and Nation: Sociological approach to Religious Nationalism (2006). He has also co-authored a book with Jelena Radojković and Milan Vukomanović Religions of the World: Buddhism, Christianity, Islam (2007) and edited six books including: A Short Introduction in the Problem of Political Will: Case Study of B-H with Asim Mujkić (2015) and Post-Yugoslavia: New Cultural and Political Perspectives with Mitja Velikonja (2014).
In 2012 he was awarded a research fellowship at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences (nias).
Mohammed Abu-Nimer
is Professor of International Peace and Conflict Resolution and President of the Salam Institute for Peace and Justice. He has conducted interreligious conflict resolution training and interfaith dialogue workshops in conflict areas around the world, such as in, Egypt, Northern Ireland, the Philippines (Mindanao), Israel, Palestine, Chad, Nigeria, and Sri Lanka. While his research has focused on a wide array of areas in peacebuilding and conflict resolution, his most recent areas of focus have included faith-based peacebuilding, interfaith dialogue in peacebuilding and building social cohesion, and pedagogical considerations on incorporating peace and forgiveness education in the Arab world and Muslim world. He also served as a Senior Advisor to the kaiciid Dialogue Centre (2008–2021).
He has been both author and editor of more than 13 books and hundreds of articles on faith-based and interfaith peace-building such as Nonviolence and Peacebuilding in Islamic Context: Bridging Ideals and Reality (2003); Reconciliation and Justice (2001); Evaluating Interreligious Peacebuilding (2021); Peace-Building By, Between and Beyond Muslims and Evangelical Christians (2009) as well as interfaith dialogue and its role in peacebuilding and reconciliation, e.g. Unity in Diversity: Interfaith Dialogue in the Middle East (2007).
is Professor of Law at the National Research University “Higher School of Economics” in Saint Petersburg where he teaches legal theory and the history of political ideas.
His research focuses on the factors that influence the real extent of protection of minority rights in different legal cultures. This is the topic of his latest publications, including the book Formalism, Decisionism and Conservatism in Russian Law (2021). He is also practising as a member of the Saint Petersburg Bar Association.
Eileen Barker
is Professor Emeritus of Sociology with special reference to the study of religion at the London School of Economics, University of London. Her main research interest is “cults”, “sects” and new religious movements, and the social reactions to which they give rise. Since 1989 she has also been investigating changes in the religious situation in the post-communist countries of Eastern Europe and has been visiting China and the Far East regularly over the past 16 years. She has over 400 publications translated into 29 different languages, including 15 sole-authored and edited books. In the late 1980s, with the support of the British Government and mainstream Churches, she founded inform, an educational charity now based at King’s College, London, which provides information about minority religions that is as accurate, contextualised and up-to-date as possible. She is a frequent advisor to governments, other official bodies and law-enforcement agencies throughout the world, has made numerous appearances on television and radio, and has been invited to give guest lectures in over 50 countries.
Jocelyne Cesari
holds the Chair of Religion and Politics at the University of Birmingham, United Kingdom; she is a senior fellow at the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs at Georgetown University. Since 2018, she has been the T. J. Dermot Dunphy Visiting Professor of Religion, Violence, and Peacebuilding at Harvard Divinity School. President elect of the European Academy of Religion (2018–19), her work on religion and politics has garnered recognition and awards: 2020 Distinguished Scholar of the religion section of the International Studies Association, Distinguished Fellow of the Carnegie Council for Ethics and International Affairs and the Royal Society for Arts in the United Kingdom.
Her most recent publications are: We God’s People: Christianity, Islam and Hinduism in the World of Nations (Cambridge University Press 2022); What is Political Islam? (Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2018 book award of the International
Henriette Dahan Kalev
is Professor emerita from Ben Gurion University in the Negev, Israel. Her fields are political science and gender. She specialises in political protests and gender resistance, mainly in marginalised populations. She is a Truman Institute for Peace research fellow at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. In recent years her research focused on the following topics: 1. The complex connections between gender and economy, women protests and the states institutions, 2.Transformations in the lives of women in the Middle East and North Africa, 3. Political thought and religion: The gender perspective. Recently she has published two books: Resistance at the social margins, (2018 in Hebrew); An anatomy of feminist resistance (2019. She now concentrates on a book that will synthesise her last five years research data on Israel, politics and gender. The epicentre of this study is an analysis of the effects of neoliberal economy on gender and marginalised populations since 2008 until now, including Covid-19 pandemic effects. The case studies are taken from women in the Middle East as well as Israel’s economy and the oecd countries. In the decade before retiring she has founded the Gender Studies Program in the Ben Gurion University and chaired it for four more years. She spent time researching and teaching in leading universities such as Oxford (2003–2004), nyu (2011–2012) and ucla (2015).
Alessandro Ferrari
is Professor of State Laws and Religions and Comparative Law of Religions at the University of Insubria (Varese and Como). He is associated member of gsrl, the cnrs Research Group Sociétés, Religions, Laïcités (Paris) and of the Unité Mixte de Recherche Droit, Religion, Entreprise et Société of the Strasbourg University and cnrs. He is member of the coordination of the network pluriel-Linking Researchers on Islam and Dialogue. Since 2010 he has been member of the different Councils for the relations with Islam established at the Italian Home Ministry. His research interests focus on the legal status of Muslims in Europe, the transformation of European secularism and the religious freedom across the two Mediterranean shores. He has been Visiting Fellow at the Islamic Legal Studies Program of the Harvard Law School (2019), invited Directeur d’Études at the École Pratiques des Hautes Études – Paris (2018) and Roberta Buffett Visiting Scholar at the Northwestern University (2014). His current research project concerns the development of the right to religious freedom between the two Mediterranean shores read through the
Ahmet T. Kuru
is Porteous Professor of Political Science at San Diego State University. He received his PhD from the University of Washington and held a post-doc position at Columbia University. He is the author of award-winning Secularism and State Policies toward Religion: The United States, France, and Turkey (2009). His 2019 book Islam, Authoritarianism, and Underdevelopment: A Global and Historical Comparison received the American Political Science Association's International History and Politics Section Award. His works have been translated into Arabic, Bosnian, Chinese, French, German, Indonesian, Persian, and Turkish.
Maximilian Lakitsch
is a postdoctoral lecturer and senior researcher in the Department of Global Governance at the Institute of the Foundations of Law at the University of Graz and coordinates the Austrian Conflict – Peace – Democracy Cluster. He wrote his doctoral thesis at the University of Graz and the American University of Beirut and was awarded the Christiane Rajewsky Prize for young scholars by the German Association for Peace and Conflict Studies. His research focuses on issues of political power, legitimacy, posthuman politics, and religion in International Relations and Peace and Conflict Studies. Many of his publications deal with these issues in the regional context of the Middle East and North Africa, especially Syria, Lebanon and Israel-Palestine.
Andrea Lehner-Hartmann
is Professor for Religious Education at the Institute for Practical Theology at the Faculty of Catholic Theology and Deputy Head at the Center for Teacher Training at the University of Vienna. Her research focuses on (inter)religious education, subjective theories, gender, religion and education as well as violence in families and schools and subjective didactics. She is a member of the Research Center Religion and Transformation (RaT), the Vienna Doctoral School of Theology and Research on Religion (vdtr), and the research platform Gender: Ambivalent In_Visibilities (gain), Co-editor of the journal örf and member of the scientific advisory board of the series Religious Education in Plural Society (rpg).
holds a PhD in the study of religions from the University of Lucerne in Switzerland, where she also completed her Master’s degree in sociology. She works as a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Research Centre “Religion and Transformation in Contemporary Society”. Previous to her appointment at the Research Centre, she conducted research at the universities of Berne and Lucerne in Switzerland and the Istituto Svizzero di Roma in Italy. Her current research interests comprise religion in migration societies, religion politics as well as religion and youth in digital spaces.
Rüdiger Lohlker
holds a Chair for Islamic Studies at the Oriental Institute, University of Vienna. He is a member of the Research Center “Religion and Transformation in Contemporary Societies”. He is also Adjunct Professor at the Syrian Research Institute, Northwest University, Xi‘an, pr China. His main research interests are History of Islamic ideas, Islam and modernity, Islam and Arab world online, Indonesian Islam, science studies, critique of Orientalism. Recent publications include Saudi Arabia in the Mirror of Saudi Cables (2020); Zwischen Wiener Wald und Moslemkutten. (Alp-)Träumereien eines weißen älteren Mitteleuropäers (2021); Religion and Disease, special issue of J-RaT (2021), Humanitarian Islam (ed. with K. Ivanyi) (i. pr.)
Joseph Marko
is Professor emeritus of Public Law and Political Sciences at the University of Graz. Former international judge and Vice-president of the Constitutional Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina (1997–2002); expert member of the Advisory Committee of the Council of Ministers of the Council of Europe under the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities (1998–2002 and 2006–2008); politico-legal advisor to the Special Representative of the UN Secretary General, Espen Eide, in the negotiations on the re-unification of Cyprus (2015–2017).
He has published several monographs, edited volumes and more than 120 articles on comparative constitutional law and politics, nationalism, power-sharing, human rights and minority protection. Recently: Human and Minority Rights Protection by Multiple Diversity Governance. History, Law, Ideology and Politics in European Perspective (2019, co-edited with S. Constantin).
is Professor of Sociology, Politics and Public Policy and founding Director of the Centre for the Study of Ethnicity and Citizenship at the University of Bristol and the co-founder of the journal, Ethnicities. He has held over 40 grants and consultancies and has published over 35 (co-)authored and (co-)edited books and reports and over 250 articles and chapters. He was ranked #131 in the world ( #19 in UK) in the Research.Com citations 2022 ranking for Law, Politics, Sociology and Social Policy. His work is frequently cited by policy-makers and practitioners and on several occasions has influenced policy. He was awarded a mbe by the Queen for services to social sciences and ethnic relations in 2001, made a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences (UK) in 2004 and elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2017. He served on the Commission on the Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain, the National Equality Panel, and the Commission on Religion and Belief in British Public Life.
His latest books include Essays on Secularism and Multiculturalism (2019), Multiculturalism: A Civic Idea (2nd ed; 2013); and as co-editor Multiculturalism and Interculturalism (2016) and The Problem of Religious Diversity: European Problems, Asian Challenges (2017).
Dina El Omari
is Professor of Intercultural Religious Pedagogy at the Center of Islamic Theology at the wwu Münster where she has also been the project leader at the Cluster of Excellence "Religion and Politics" since October 2019, leading an independent research project entitled "The Ambiguity of Islamic Emancipatory Discourses in Past and Present". She completed her Habilitation procedure in May 2021 with the Habilitation thesis Das koranische Menschenpaar in Schöpfung und Eschatologie – Versuch einer historisch-literaturwissenschaftlichen Kommentierung (Herder Verlag 2021). Since 2017 she is a member of the European Society of Women in Theological Research.
Manfred L. Pirner
holds the Chair of Religious Education at the Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany. He is Director of the Research Unit for Public Religion and Education (rupre); Co-Director of the Competence Centre for School Development and Evaluation (kse); founding member of the Centre for Human Rights Erlangen-Nürnberg (chren) and associated member of the Bavarian Research Center for Interreligious Discourses (BaFID). His main research fields are public theology and public education; human rights,
Recent publications include: M. L. Pirner, J. Lähnemann & H. Bielefeldt (eds.), Human Rights and Religion in Educational Contexts (2016).
Zekirija Sejdini
is Professor for Islamic religious education, founder and Director of the Institute for Islamic Theology and Religious Education and Co-director of the Centre for Interreligious Studies at the University of Innsbruck. He is the founder and editor of the internet platform
His most recent publications: Rethinking Islam in Europe. Contemporary Approaches in Islamic Religious Education and Theology (2022) and Conflicts in Interreligious Education. Exploring Theory and Practice (2022).
Wolfgang Weirer
is Associate Professor of Religious Education at the University of Graz. His writing and research focusses on basic questions of religious education, justification of and further developments in denominational religious education, biblical didactics, and interreligious education. He is editor of the journal Österreichisches Religionspädagogisches Forum (örf) and co-editor of limina – Grazer Theologische Perspektiven. He is Head of the Interdisciplinary Doctoral School of Didactics at the University of Graz and directs a research project on “Christian-Islamic Religious Education through Team Teaching”.
Franz Winter
is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Graz and holds a PhD both in Classical Philology (1999) and Religious Studies (2005, sub auspiciis praesidentis rei publicae) and a Habilitation in Religious Studies (2010). He conducted research and studies in Graz, Salzburg, Vienna, Rome, Kyoto, Boston (Fulbright professorship) and Nizwa and is member of the research platform Religion and Transformation (RaT) and the Vienna Doctoral School of Theology and Research on Religion (vdtr) at the University of Vienna, as well as faculty member of the International Graduate School “Resonant self-world relations in ancient and modern socio-religious practices” (University of Graz/Max Weber Kolleg at the University of Erfurt). His research interests encompass the
One of his recent publications, the Handbook of East Asian New Religious Movements (Brill, 2018, ed. together Lukas Pokorny), won an accolade as “best edited volume” in social sciences at the International Association of Asian Studies 2019.
Kerstin Wonisch
is Senior Researcher at Eurac Research Bolzano and holds a background in law (Mag. jur. 2015) and religious studies (ma 2017) and a Ph.D in law and politics from the University of Graz (2022). Her research focuses on the governance of religious diversity, as well as on religion and gender. She has published several edited volumes and scholarly articles on these topics in international journals.