Authors

Nada Dosti is the author of “Islamophobia in Albania: National Report 2019” in European Islamophobia Report 2019. She holds a master’s degree in English Teaching from the University of Tirana, Albania, and a master’s degree in Media and Communication Studies from the Faculty of Communication, Ankara University, Turkey. With an experience of twelve years as a journalist and an activist trying to be a voice for Muslim women in Albania, Dosti responds publicly to Islamophobic attacks in media – especially on the topic of the hijab – by giving interviews and participating in public debates. She is the founder of Muslimania.al, a portal dedicated to Muslim women that promotes success stories, challenges Islamophobia, and gives a voice to Muslim women, while also providing a space for them to share their concerns and opinions.

 Email: nada.dosti@gmail.com

Farid Hafez, is Visiting Professor of International Studies at Williams College and non-resident senior researcher at Georgetown University’s “The Bridge Initiative” at the School of Foreign Service. He defended his habilitation thesis entitled “Islam-Politics in the Second Republic of Austria” at the University of Salzburg in 2019. In 2017, he was a Fulbright visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley and in 2014, he was a visiting scholar at Columbia University, New York. Since 2010 he has been the editor of Islamophobia Studies Yearbook, and since 2016 the co-editor of European Islamophobia Report. Hafez has received the Bruno Kreisky Award for the “Political Book of the Year” for his anthology Islamophobia in Austria (co-edited with John Bunzl). He has more than 100 publications in leading journals such as Politics and Religion, Patterns of Prejudice, and German Politics and Society. His latest publications are Islamophobia in Muslim Majority Societies (Routledge, co-edited with Enes Bayrakli, 2019) and Feindbild Islam. Über die Salonfähigkeit von Rassismus (Islamophobia. On the Mainstreaming of Racism) (Böhlau, 2019).

Email: fh6@williams.edu

Dr Amina Easat-Daas is a Lecturer in Politics at De Montfort University, Leicester, United Kingdom. Her research interests include Islamophobia studies and, in particular, its gendered dimensions, the effective countering of Islamophobia, Islam in Europe, and Muslim political participation in francophone Europe. Her recently published book is entitled Muslim Women’s Political Participation in France and Belgium (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020). Alongside her academic scholarship, Easat-Daas has regularly worked with and presented her research at the OSCE-ODIHR, the European Parliament, and the Council of Europe, among others. Easat-Daas also regularly engages with media on Muslim-related current affairs. 

Email: amina.easat-daas@dmu.ac.uk

Hikmet Karčić is a researcher at the Institute for Islamic Tradition of Bosniaks in Sarajevo. He has a BA and LL.M. from the Faculty of Law, University of Sarajevo, and a PhD in Political Science and Sociology from the International University of Sarajevo. Previously, Karčić worked at the Missing Persons Institute of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Center for Advanced Studies (CNS) in Sarajevo, and was the project coordinator for “Mapping of Detention Camps in Bosnia and Herzegovina 1992-1995” at the association Tranzicijska pravda, odgovornost i sjećanje (TPOS) [Transitional Justice, Accountability and Responsibilty (TJAR)]. Karčić is the editor of Remembering the Bosnian Genocide: Justice, Memory and Denial (Sarajevo: Institute for Islamic Tradition of Bosniaks, 2016). Karčić is the author of several research articles on the subject of war crimes and memorialization, and has produced two documentaries related to the former. 

Email: karcic@iitb.ba

Aziz Nazmi Şakir (PhD, History of Sciences, Istanbul University) earned his bachelor’s degree from the Department of Arabic and Semitic Studies and his master’s degree from the Department of Turkic and Altaic Studies at the University of Sofia “St. Kliment Ohridski”. Since 2001 he has been a faculty member of the School of Languages and the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Sabanci University, Istanbul. Şakir is currently lecturing at the New Bulgarian University, Sofia and at Sabanci University, Istanbul. Besides his academic research dedicated to the Ottoman heritage in the Balkans and Bulgaria’s Muslims, he is an accomplished writer and translator with more than thirty translations of poetry and prose to his credit. 

E-mail: azizshakir@yahoo.com

Nejra Kadić Meškić is CEO at the Centre for Cultural Dialogue, which builds intercultural societies and fights growing mistrust and polarization by strengthening intercultural and interreligious dialogue. Meškić has ten years of experience as a program and campaign leader in the field of human rights, culture of dialogue, gender equality, and youth at the political and implementation levels. She is an associate at the Islamic Community in Croatia. Meškić is a trainer on teamwork and leadership in educational programs for youth. She has worked in the NGO sector in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, and in 2013, she received an award for her contribution to the achievement of gender equality from the Parliament of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Since 2019, Meškić has been a KAICIID fellow. E-mail: nejra.kadic.sa@gmail.com

Zora Hesová is a research fellow at the Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences and an assistant professor at the Institute for Political Science, Charles University, Prague. She works on the Islamic intellectual tradition, modern Islam in Europe, and, more generally, on religion in contemporary politics with a particular focus on Central Europe and the Balkans. Hesová has published a book on the philosophy of Abu Hamid al-Ghazali and articles on Islam in Europe, religion and populism, the Arab Spring, and Islamophobia. 

Email: Zora.Hesova@ff.cuni.cz

Amani Hassani is a Danish anthropologist with a PhD from Concordia University, Canada. She is the Sociological Review Fellow (2020/2021) at the University of Keele, United Kingdom. Hassani is an urban ethnographer who combines anthropology, sociology, and geography in the study of Muslims living in the global North. Her recent research compares the experiences of young Muslims in Denmark and Canada, exploring issues of racialisation, social mobility, and urban life from a transatlantic perspective. Hassani is also the research director at Centre for Muslims’ Rights in Denmark – CEDA (previously known as Centre for Danish-Muslim Relations – CEDAR), a Danish NGO that seeks to raise awareness and address Islamophobia and anti-Muslim racism in Denmark.

Email: hassani.amani@gmail.com

Egert Rünne is the executive director of the Estonian Human Rights Centre. He is the Estonian project manager of FRANET, the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights’ multidisciplinary research network. Currently, Rünne is also involved in various studies related to the Roma community and their well-being in Estonia and Europe. Email: egert.rynne@humanrights.ee

Liina Laanpere participates as a legal expert at FRANET, the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights’ multidisciplinary research network. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Law from Tartu University and a Master’s degree in International Human Rights Law from University College Cork, Ireland.

Email: liina.laanpere@humanrights.ee

Enrique Tessieri is a sociologist and former journalist who has written and researched immigration topics. As a journalist, Tessieri worked in countries like Finland, Spain, Italy, Argentina, and Colombia writing on topics such as human rights, business, and foreign investment. Tessieri is editor of Migrant Tales, a community blog he founded in 2007. He is chairperson and founder of the Anti-Hate Crime Organisation Finland and vice president of Rom-Mikkeli, an association founded in 2015 to further the rights of the Roma minority in the city of Mikkeli in Eastern Finland. Tessieri works at Otava Folk High School as a teacher and is an advisor for the Master’s degree in Conflictology at the Open University of Catalonia. 

Email: editor@migranttales.net

Chafika Attalai graduated from Aix-Marseille University in France (BA in Law, Economics and Languages) and Granada University in Spain (BA in Translation and Interpretation) before graduating from Brussels University in Belgium with a degree in Multilingual Communication and International Relations (MA). Attalai is an expert on Islamophobia and her research focuses on migrants’ rights and stateless persons. She was engaged in the fight against Islamophobia through the Collective Against Islamophobia in France (CCIF) where she was in charge of European advocacy, strategy building, conferences, action plan, and international networking. Attalai is also engaged in racial justice through EQUINOX. 

Email: chafika.ccif@gmail.com

Dahina Moussi graduated from Cergy-Pontoise in France (BA in General Law) and Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (Masters in Private Law and Masters in Business Law) before graduating from Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint-Denis with a degree in Medical and Health Law (MA). Her research focuses on discrimination in access to healthcare, and Islamophobia in the medical field. She’s also a PhD student in Public Law at the University of Lorraine. Moussi was engaged in the fight against Islamophobia through the Collective Against Islamophobia in France (CCIF) where she was a jurist.

Email: dahinamoussi@gmail.com

Soner Tauscher was born in 1982 in Munich, Germany. He studied in Germany, where he completed his degree in political science at Ludwig Maximilian University. Tauscher received his PhD with the title “Relations between moral-right-politics in the Western and Islamic world of thought: A bioethical discussion” from Sakarya University. He works as Vice Director at the Diaspora Research Center at Sakarya University. His research fields are migration, discrimination and human rights, biopolitics, bioethics, and political philosophy. Tauscher is affiliated with Sakarya University. 

E-mail: sonertauscher@hotmail.com

Ali Huseyinoglu was born in Komotini, Greece. After completing primary education at the bilingual (Turkish and Greek) school in his home town, he continued secondary and higher education in Istanbul and Ankara. Huseyinoglu received his BA and MSc from the Department of International Relations, Middle East Technical University (METU) and a PhD from the University of Sussex. Currently, he is teaching as an associate professor of International Relations in the Balkan Research Institute at Trakya University, Turkey. Huseyinoglu’s main research interests include human and minority rights, migration studies, Turkish-Greek relations, the Muslim Turkish minority of Western Thrace, religious freedoms, and Islamophobia.

Email: alihuseyinoglu@trakya.edu.tr

Alexandros Sakellariou is teaching sociology at the Hellenic Open University since 2016 and is a senior researcher at Panteion University of Athens. He earned his PhD in Sociology of Religion from the Department of Sociology of Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences, Athens. Sakellariou has extensive research experience in large-scale EU projects; since 2011 he has been working on young people’s sociopolitical engagement and well-being, the evaluation of innovative social policies, and radicalisation. His scientific interests include, among others, sociology of religion, sociology of youth, politics and religion, religious communities in Greek society, youth activism and civic participation, right-wing extremism, radicalisation, and qualitative research methods. He is a board member of the Hellenic League for Human Rights.

Email: sociology.panteion@gmail.com

Nadia Jones-Gailani is an assistant professor of Gender Studies at Central European University. She received her doctorate degree in 2013 from the University of Toronto in Gender and Women’s History. Her monograph Transnational Identity and Memory Making in the Lives of Iraqi Women in Diaspora was published in the fall of 2020 in the Gender and History Series of the University of Toronto Press. Email: jonesn@ceu.edu

Gabi Gőbl received her Master’s degree in Sociology from Eötvös Lóránd University (ELTE), Budapest. She has worked in various non-governmental organizations in Hungary as a project manager before joining the Center for European Neighborhood Studies (CENS) at the Central European University as program coordinator in 2013. Since then, CENS has merged into the recently formed CEU Democracy Institute, Budapest. Since 2015, Gőbl has been involved in various international research projects, including the EU’s Erasmus+ Jean Monnet program and the Austrian Future Fund, researching the so-called migration and refugee crisis with a specific focus on the Hungarian aspect. 

E-mail: goblg@ceu.edu

James Carr lectures in the Department of Sociology, University of Limerick, Ireland. In 2016, he published the book Experiences of Islamophobia: Living with Racism in the Neoliberal Era (London and New York: Routledge) which focused on anti-Muslim racism in Ireland. Carr has published research with the Immigrant Council of Ireland, supported by the Open Society Foundations, entitled Islamophobia in Dublin: Experiences and How to Respond. He has authored the European Islamophobia Report submissions on Ireland for the period 2015-19, and, among others, he has been the contributor to the Yearbook of Muslims in Europe for Ireland in the same period.

Email: james.carr@ul.ie

Antonia Roberta Siino has a PhD in Sociology and Social Research from the University of Bologna and was a visiting student at the Department of Sociology, University of Oxford. Siino has extensive experience in the study of organized crime, and specifically mafia-type organizations, and its interactions with civil society, as well as in empirical research conducted with both qualitative and quantitative methods. She has published articles, both in Italian and English, in academic journals such as Sociological Review, Sicurezza e Scienze Sociali, and Frontiers in Sociology. Siino is the author of the national report on Italy in European Islamophobia Report 2019. 

Email: antoniasiino8@gmail.com

Adem Ferizaj is a graduate teaching assistant and PhD candidate at SOAS University of London. His dissertation theorises different forms of racialised and gendered discriminations in continental Europe. He is the author of the academic paper “Othering Albanian Muslim Masculinities: A Case Study of Albanian Football Players”, published in the journal Occhialì – Rivista sul Mediterraneo islamico (2019). Having completed a master’s degree in international relations at Sciences Po Paris, Ferizaj is also an essayist who publishes for different newspapers and cultural magazines in Albanian, German, French, and English. Email: af44@soas.ac.uk

Akvilė Kriščiūnaitė is a researcher at the Lithuanian NGO Diversity Development Group that carries out research and social projects in the fields of human rights, equal opportunities, diversity, migration and integration. Kriščiūnaitė’s areas of interest include migration policies in Central and Eastern Europe, nationalism, discrimination based on ethnic and national grounds, and the migration and development nexus. She holds an MSc in Migration Studies from the University of Oxford and a BA in Sociology and Quantitative Methods from the University of Warwick. 

Email: akvile@diversitygroup.lt

Sara Ezabe Malliue is a lawyer. She holds a Master of Advocacy degree and a Master in Human Rights Law & Practice, and is currently reading for a Master in Public Policy Leadership at the University of Malta. She completed a leadership course at the University of Cambridge, UK as a recipient of an award by Queen Elizabeth II. Ezabe Malliue has been researching hate speech online and conducted a research project entitled “Negotiating Peace in the Ambit of Freedom of Speech” (ELSA, Malta 2016) to highlight the importance of creating policies to tackle hate speech. She is the co-founder of the campaign “Redefining Us” which was created with the aim of combating discrimination and hate speech, and to raise awareness about religious and ethnic minorities in Malta. For this, she was awarded the Young Impactful Politician Award by the Junior Chamber International (JCI) Malta. Ezabe Malliue contributes to a local newspaper where she shares her reflections on being a Maltese Muslim and on other issues faced by minorities. 

Email: Saraev96@gmail.com

Amina Šemsović has a BA (University of Novi Pazar) and an MA (University of Kragujevac) in English Language and Literature. Her civic activism earned her a scholarship for the European Regional Master’s Programme in Democracy and Human Rights (joint degree) at the University of Bologna and the University of Sarajevo. After her graduation in 2016, she gained extensive experience in the field of human rights through numerous training programs, projects, and summer schools. In 2018, she was awarded a fellowship at the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. As a representative of the Bosniak and Muslim minority in Serbia, she spent a month in Geneva, where she participated in several UN bodies including the 11th and 13th sessions of the Forum on Minority Issues. 

Email: amina_sems@hotmail.com

Amina Smits Akılma is a PhD candidate at the Department of Islamic Studies, Institute of Social Sciences at Istanbul 29 Mayıs University, Istanbul. She graduated from the Institute of Alliance of Civilizations at Fatih Sultan Mehmet Foundation University in Istanbul. Her thesis was a critique on Edward Said’s Orientalism in light of Ottoman-European relations. Born and raised in Belgium, she graduated from the Department of Islamic and Arabic Studies, Faculty of Arts at KU Leuven. Smits Akılma’s fields of study and research interests are Orientalism, Occidentalism, Islamophobia, Islamic religious education (especially in non-Islamic countries), Islamic theology (Kalaam), and sociology of religion. Besides her native Dutch, she speaks Turkish and English at a native level, and reads French and Arabic. 

Email: aminasmits@gmail.com

Mersiha Smailovikj is a human rights activist, lawyer, and humanitarian. She completed her master’s degree in International Law at Iustinianus Primus Faculty of Law, Skopje. Her research and activism interests focus on discrimination against Muslims and Islamophobia, gender equality, rights of ethnic groups, and advocating for the rights of refugees and migrants. 

Email : mersiha.s@legis.mk

Anna Wilczyńska is a specialist on Islam, an Arabic language interpreter, and a freelance journalist. She is a co-author of the most popular platform in the Polish language educating on Islam, namely islamistablog.pl (SalamLab.pl since 1st March 2021). Wilczyńska has reported on conflicts, migration, and interreligious affairs from Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Morocco, Turkey, and the Gulf countries, as well as several EU states. She provides lectures and training on Islam and Arabic culture for police, border guards, lawyers, NGOs, students, and teachers. Wilczyńska collaborates with Halina Nieć Legal Aid Center to facilitate language support for Arabic-speaking migrants in detention centers in Poland. She organizes open events for the education of the general public and social cohesion. 

E-mail : anna.n.wilczynska@gmail.com

Dr. Karol Wilczyński is a freelance journalist and activist. He earned his doctorate degree from the Artes Liberales Academy, Warsaw with the thesis The Concept of Falsafa in Early Arabic Writings. Wilczyński is a co-author of the most popular platform on Islam in Polish, islamistablog.pl (SalamLab.pl since 1st March 2021). He uses social media and journalism to organize communities and propose positive solutions to the growing problems of polarization, discrimination, and social exclusion. He has reported on the so-called migration crisis from Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Morocco, Turkey, and the Gulf countries, as well as several EU states. Wilczyński cooperates with several networks and coalitions of organizations working with people on the move. He is a member of the program “A World of Neighbors.” Wilczyński is the co-author of the chapter “In Poland the Stranger Threatens Christianity: Polish Catholics and Their Attitude towards Refugees” in M. Jacobsen et al. (ed.) Cosmopolitanism, Migration and Universal Human Rights (Basel: Springer, 2020). 

E-mail : kmwilczynski@gmail.com

Bogdan Ghenea is a research consultant specialising in human rights, migration/asylum, employability, and labour markets. He holds a Master’s degree in European and Romanian Politics from the University of Bucharest. Since 2010, he has written multiple shadow reports on racism and discrimination for the European Network Against Racism (ENAR) and has collaborated with the Asylum Research Centre on writing country and thematic reports. Ghenea has provided research and expert advice on employability and labour markets for clients such as Airbus and Total. Email: bogdan.ghenea@gmail.com

Sofia A. Ragozina is a research fellow at the Institute of Oriental Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences, and a lecturer at the National Research University Higher School of Economics. She is also the managing editor in the peer-reviewed academic journal State, Religion and Church in Russia and Worldwide (Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration). Her doctoral thesis examined the image of Islam in Russian media. Ragozina’s professional interests include Muslim studies, sociology of Islam, and discourse analysis. 

Email: sofyaragozina@gmail.com

Ivan Ejub Kostić is a PhD candidate at the Faculty of Political Sciences, University of Belgrade, Serbia. He graduated from the Department of Oriental Studies, Arabic Language and Literature at the Faculty of Philology, University of Belgrade. He holds a Master’s degree in Islamic Studies awarded by the same department. In the academic years 2011-2013, he was a lecturer at the Faculty of Media and Communications at Singidunum University, Belgrade. Kostić is one of the founders of the Balkan Centre for the Middle East, and became its managing director in 2013. He has co-authored the book Persecuted Islam (2013), and edited Religion, Belief and Civic Identity and the textbook Contemporary Islamic Thought (2019). Kostić is a member of the editorial board of the academic periodical Journal for Religious Sciences – Kom and a regular contributor to the Yearbook of Muslims in Europe published by Brill. He is also a member of the board of the European Muslim Network seated in Brussels and chief editor of the regional online platform “Algoritam – Contemporary Islamic Thought and Culture.” Kostić has written numerous academic papers and articles in the field of Islamic studies, and is a regular contributor to leading media outlets in the country and the region on issues related to nationalism and religion, Balkan Muslims, and the Middle East and Islam. 

Email: kostici2000@yahoo.co.uk

Ana Frank received her PhD from the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana in 2013. From 2007 to 2014, she worked as a researcher on several European projects at the Peace Institute, a renowned NGO in Ljubljana, Slovenia. Between 2005 and 2007, she was a visiting student in Turkey at the University of Istanbul and Ankara University. She complemented her studies at the University of Lodz, Poland, and Florida International University, USA. In 2012-2013, she conducted research at Sabancı University in Istanbul for her PhD thesis entitled “The Influence of the Europeanisation Context on Religious Discourses in Gender Equality and Intimate Citizenship Policies in Turkey”. Her fields of research and academic interest are international relations, gender studies, religious studies, postcolonial studies, discourse analysis, discrimination, Europeanisation, Turkey, and Islam. Her book Feminism and Islam: Turkish Women between the Orient and the West (Slovenian and English language editions) was published by the Peace Institute in 2014. She works as a freelance researcher.

Email: afrankica@yahoo.com

Aurora Ali is a human rights activist based in Madrid and director of the Spanish Muslim Association for Human Rights (Asociación Musulmana por los Derechos Humanos, AMDEH). Having studied international administration and languages and with extensive experience in the trade and legal sectors in Geneva, Madrid, and Cairo, in 2015, Ali started her specialization in human rights and anti-Muslim hatred in Spain at the Citizens Platform against Islamophobia (PCCI) and the Observatory of Islamophobia in the Media. In 2018, she co-founded AMDEH, where she is currently in charge of a research project on securitization. 

Email: amderechoshumanos@gmail.com

Masoud Kamali is a professor of Social Work, Sociology. He worked at Uppsala University and Mid Sweden University in Sweden until 2019. Currently, Kamali is the scientific leader of the research and consulting organization “Incare Sweden AB.” As a result of his research and engagements in the questions of discrimination and social justice, Kamali was appointed by the Swedish government as the head of the “Governmental Inquiry into Power, Integration and Structural Discrimination” between 2004 and 2006. The results and suggestions of the inquiry have resulted in many anti-oppressive changes in Swedish social policy and in the national educational system. Appointing Kamali as the head of a governmental inquiry was a historic event in Sweden since historically all governmental inquiries have been led by political scientists with a Swedish background and not by scholars from the field of social work with an immigrant background. His appointment was also a result of Kamali’s leadership in the major international research project “The European Dilemma: Institutional Patterns and Politics,” funded by the European Union (2002-2008).
Kamali has extensive research experience and publications in the field of social work and sociology with clear global perspectives on current social problems, such as neoliberalism, war, violence, forced migration, inequalities, and racism and discrimination. Among his recent publications are Revolutionary Social Work: Promoting Sustainable Justice (Critical and Radical Social Work, 2019); Neoliberalism, Nordic Welfare States and Social Work: Current and Future Challenges (Routledge, 2018); War, Violence and Social Justice: Theories for Social Work (Routledge, 2015); Racial Discrimination: Institutional Patterns and Politics (Routledge, 2009); and Fishing for Development: A Question for Social Work (International Social Work, 2012).

E-mail: masokama68@gmail.com

Nermina Ademović-Omerčić works as a legal advisor to victims of anti-Muslim racism. She is involved in various working groups and projects against discrimination in Switzerland. Ademović-Omerčić holds a degree from the Law Department of the University of Fribourg, Switzerland and a master’s degree from the University of Bern, specializing in international and European law. She is currently a legal advisor of the Federation of Islamic Organisations in Switzerland (FIOS/FIDS), the largest Swiss Muslim umbrella organisation. 

Email: nermina.ademovic@fids.ch

Aristotle Kallis is a professor of Modern and Contemporary History at Keele University, UK. His research interests revolve around fascism and the contemporary radical/far right in transnational terms, with a particular focus on the ‘mainstreaming’ of extreme views and on the processes that facilitate taboo-breaking language and behaviour. He has published extensively on the history of fascism and the radical right; on the rise of far-right extremism in Greece and Germany; on the mainstream-extremism nexus with regard to a number of key themes in the ideology of the far right including nationalism, sovereignty, and attitudes to particular groups of ‘others’; and on Islamophobia and anti-Semitism. 

Email: aristotlekallis@gmail.com