ADEM FERIZAJ
Adem Ferizaj is a PhD student at the Centre for Gender Studies at SOAS University of London. His dissertation is an epistemological study of the roles of Muslim-ma jority populations from the Balkans in the global hierarchies of whiteness. He has previously worked as a graduate teaching assistant at SOAS and is the author of the 2019 academic paper “Othering Albanian Muslim Masculinities: A Case Study of Albanian Football Players”, published in Occhialì – Rivista sul Mediterraneo islamico. Email: 687617@soas.ac.uk
ADRIANA CUPCEA
Adriana Cupcea is a researcher at the Romanian Institute for Research on Na tional Minorities, Cluj-Napoca, Romania. She has a PhD in history from Babeș-Bol yai University of Cluj Napoca, Romania. Her research interests focus on Muslim com munities in the Balkans, and particularly in Romania, the construction of modern identities, the image of the Other, and the relationship between self-image and Oth erness. Cupcea is co-author of the book The Image of the Ottoman in the Romanian History Textbooks from Romania and Bosnia Herzegovina in the Post-communist Period (Istanbul: Isis Press, 2015). Email: adriana.tamasan@gmail.com
ALEXANDRA SOPA
ALEXANDROS SAKELLARIOU
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 on sociology of religion from the Department of Sociology of Panteion Uni versity. Sakellariou has extensive research experience in large-scale EU projects. Since 2011 he has been working on young people’s socio-political engagement and well-be ing, the evaluation of innovative social policies, and radicalisation. His scientific in terests include, among others, sociology of religion, sociology of youth, politics and religion, religious communities in Greek society, youth activism and civic participa tion, right-wing extremism, radicalisation, and qualitative research methods. He is a board member of the Hellenic League for Human Rights. Email: sakellariou.alexandros@ac.eap.gr
ALI HUSEYINOGLU
Ali Huseyinoglu was born in Komotini, Greece. After completing primary ed ucation at the bilingual (Turkish and Greek) school in his hometown, he continued secondary and higher education in Istanbul and Ankara. Huseyinoglu received his BA and MSc from the Department of International Relations, Middle East Techni cal University (METU), and his PhD from the University of Sussex. Since 2019, he has been teaching as an associate professor of international relations in the Balkan Research Institute at Trakya University, Edirne, Turkey. Currently, Huseyinoglu is the editor of the Journal of Balkan Research Institute (JBRI). Among others, Husey inoglu’s main research interests include human rights of minorities, migration stud ies, Turkish-Greek relations, the Muslim Turkish minority of Western Thrace, Islam in Europe, and Islamophobia. Email: alihuseyinoglu@trakya.edu.tr
AMANI HASSANI
Amani Hassani is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at Brunel University and a soci ologist who has done extensive research on experiences of Islamophobia among Mus lims in Denmark. 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 the research director at the Centre for Muslims’ Rights in Denmark (CEDA), a Danish NGO that seeks to raise awareness and address Islamophobia in Denmark. Email: amani@ceda.nu
AMINA EASAT DAAS
Amina Easat-Daas is a lecturer in politics at De Montfort University, Leicester, United Kingdom. Her research interests include Islamophobia studies and, in particu lar, its gendered dimensions, the effective countering of Islamophobia, urban Mus limness, Islam in Europe, and Muslim political participation in francophone Europe. Easat-Daas recently published a manuscript entitled Muslim Women’s Political Partic ipation in France and Belgium (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020). Alongside her academic scholarship, Easat-Daas has regularly worked with and presented her work, among others, at the OSCE-ODIHR, the European Parliament, and the Council of Europe. Easat-Daas also engages with media on Muslim-related current affairs. Email: amina.easat-daas@dmu.ac.uk
AMINA SMITS
Amina Smits is a PhD candidate at the Department of History at Istanbul Me deniyet University. She graduated from the Institute of Alliance of Civilizations at Fa tih 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, Fac ulty of Arts at KU Leuven. Smits’s fields of study and research interests are Orien talism, Occidentalism, Islamophobia, post-colonial studies, Ottoman-European re lations, Islamic religious education in non-Islamic countries, and sociology of reli gion. Besides her native Dutch, she speaks Turkish and English at a native level, and reads French and Arabic. Email: aminasmits@gmail.com
ANNA ARDIN
Anna Ardin is a PhD student at the Centre for Civil Society Research at Marie Ceder schiöld University, working on a thesis on relations between civil society organizations and municipalities with a special focus on democracy criteria and civic space. She is also the secretary of the Network for Research on Islamophobia (FARI) and a spokes person for the Swedish Committee against Anti-Muslim Racism (islamofobi.se). Email: anna.ardin@mchs.se
ANTONIA ROBERTA SIINO
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, Uni versity of Oxford. Siino has been working for a long time on the study of organized crime (specifically mafia-type organizations) and its interactions with civil society, and conducting empirical research based both on qualitative and quantitative methods. She has published articles, both in Italian and English, in academic journals such as the Sociological Review and Sicurezza e Scienze Sociali. Siino authored the national re port on Italy for the European Islamophobia Report in 2019 and 2020. Email: antoniasiino8@gmail.com
ARISTOTLE KALLIS
Aristotle Kallis is a professor of modern and contemporary history at Keele Uni versity, UK. His research interests revolve around fascism and the contemporary radi cal/far right in transnational terms, with a particular focus on the ‘normalisation’ and ‘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
AZIZ NAZMI SAKIR
Aziz Nazmi Şakir (PhD, History of Sciences, Istanbul University) earned his BA and MA from the Departments of Arabic Philology and Turkic Studies at St. Kliment Ohridski, University of Sofia, respectively. Since 2001 he has been a faculty mem ber at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences and School of Languages at Sabanci University, Istanbul. Şakir is currently lecturing at New Bulgarian University, Sofia and Sabanci University, Istanbul. Besides his academic research dedicated to the Ot toman 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. Email: ashakir@sabanciuniv.edu & ashakir@nbu.bg
EMIN POLJAREVIC
Emin Poljarević is an associate professor of sociology of religion and a senior lecturer in Islamic theology and philosophy at Uppsala University, Sweden. Poljarević’s doc toral thesis1 examined the range of motivations behind mobilization of young Mus lim Brotherhood activists in Egypt right before the popular uprisings in 2011. His current research explores the dynamics of Islamophobia, social mobilization in Mus lim minority and majority contexts, Muslim civil rights activism, political theology in Islamicate contexts, Islamic liberation theology, and Malcolm X studies. Email: emin.poljarevic@teol.uu.se
ENRIQUE TESSIERI
Enrique Tessieri is a sociologist and former journalist who has written and re searched immigration topics. As a journalist, Tessieri worked in countries like Finland, Spain, Italy, Argentina, and Colombia, writing on human rights, business, and for eign investment. Tessieri is the editor of Migrant Tales, a community blog he founded in 2007. He is chairperson and founder of the Anti-Hate Crime Organisation Fin land 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. He was a board member (2016-2019) of the European Network Against Racism. Tessieri works at Otava Folk High School as a teacher. Email: editor@migranttales.net
FARID HAFEZ
Farid Hafez is a visiting professor of international studies at Williams College and a non-resident senior researcher at the Bridge Initiative at the School of Foreign Ser vice, Georgetown University. He defended his habilitation thesis entitled “Islam-Poli tics 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 is the editor of Islamophobia Studies Yearbook, and since 2016 the co-editor of Euro pean Islamophobia Report. Hafez has received the Bruno Kreisky Award for the “Po litical Book of the Year” for his anthology Islamophobia in Austria (co-edited with John Bunzl). He has more than 120 publications in leading journals such as Politics and Religion, Patterns of Prejudice, and German Politics and Society. Hafez’s forthcom ing book is entitled The Rise of Global Islamophobia in the War on Terror. Coloniality, Race, and Islam, co-edited by Naved Bakali with Manchester University Press (2022).
GABI GOBL
Gabi Gőbl received her master’s degree in sociology from Eötvös Lóránd Univer sity (ELTE), Budapest. She has worked in various non-governmental organizations in Hungary as a project manager before joining the Center for European Neighbor hood Studies (CENS) at the Central European University as program coordinator in 2013. Since 2015, Gőbl has been involved in various international research pro jects, 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. Email: goblg@ceu.edu
HIKMET KARCIC
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 Sa rajevo. He has recently authored the acclaimed Torture, Humiliate, Kill, published by Michigan Press. 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 (Transitional Justice, Responsibility and Rememberance – TPOS). Karčić is the editor of Remember ing the Bosnian Genocide: Justice, Memory and Denial (Institute for Islamic Tradition of Bosniaks, 2016), 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
INES BOLANOS
Inés Bolaños is a visiting researcher at the Institute for Security and Global Affairs at Leiden University, Netherlands, and is currently working on her doctoral thesis in political science on EU terrorism prevention at the European University Institute in Italy. Her research looks at the emergence of prevention of radicalisation as a distinct policy field, its origins in the 11M attacks, and its current adaptation to right-wing violence. Inés uses qualitative interviews, both in person and remote/online, as well as policy analysis. Bolaños earned her Bachelor’s degree in English studies in Oviedo, Spain and an Erasmus Mundus Master of Arts in European studies at the Universities of Göttingen (Germany), Olomouc (Czech Republic), and Osaka (Japan). Email: ines.bolanos@eui.eu
IRIS BEAU SEGERS
Iris Beau Segers is a researcher at the Center for Research on Extremism (C-REX) at the University of Oslo. holds a PhD in Media and Communication, acquired at the University of Oslo. She also has a BSc in International Communication in Me dia and an MSc in Sociology of Culture, Media and the Arts, both acquired at the Erasmus University Rotterdam (NL). Her work focuses on far-right protest mobili sation, and the role of gender and masculinity in far-right organisations. , with a spe cific focus on anti-immigration and anti-asylum seeker mobilisation in Western Eu rope. She is the author of Mobilisation against Asylum Seekers in Contemporary Ur ban Spaces: Not in Our Backyard, which is part of the Routledge Mobilisation Series on Social Movements, Protest and Culture. At C-REX, she manages the data collec tion for the Comparative Far-right Protest (CFP) project, and she is part of the Ho rizon2020 funded DRIVE project, which examines the main drivers of far right and religiously-justified radicalisation in North-Western Europe. She holds a PhD from the University of Oslo, a BSc in International Communication in Media and an MSc in Sociology of Culture, Media and the Arts, both acquired at the Erasmus Univer sity Rotterdam (NL). Email: i.b.segers@c-rex.uio.no
JAMES CARR
James Carr is a senior lecturer in the Department of Sociology, University of Lim erick, Ireland. He researches anti-Muslim racism in Ireland and his work is currently focused on experiences of anti-Muslim hostility and discrimination, the role of local authorities, and grassroots-led community engagement. Email: james.carr@ul.ie
JOZEF LENC
Jozef Lenč is an assistant professor at the Department of Philosophy and Applied Philosophy at the Faculty of Arts, University of Ss. Cyril and Methodius in Trnava, Slovakia. His work addresses the relationship of religion and politics with a focus on political parties, Islam, and Islamic philosophy. Lenč is a commentator of Slovak and international politics, especially the Middle East, the co-author of Young Migrants in the Slovak Society (Brno: Tribun EU, 2012), and the author of Religion in Politics and the Position of Religious Political Parties (Trnava: UCM Trnava, 2016). Email: jozef.lenc@ucm.sk
KAWTAR NAJIB
Dr Kawtar Najib is a visiting researcher at the School of Geography, Politics and So ciology at Newcastle University. She is a French geographer whose research interests center on social and urban geographies of inequality and discrimination using both quantitative and qualitative methods. Najib was the principal researcher of the SAMA (Spaces of Anti-Muslim Acts) project in Paris and London, funded by the European Commission, which highlights the impact of Islamophobic discrimination on space and people. In 2021, she published her first book Spatialized Islamophobia (London and New York: Routledge) which focuses on the omnipresence of Islamophobia across spatial scales. More broadly, Najib’s research explores issues of social and spatial justice. Email: kawtar.najib@newcastle.ac.uk
LOUISE RYAN
Louise Ryan is a lecturer in the Department of sociology, University of Limer ick, Ireland. Her research focuses on the intersection of algorithmic cultures, sur veillance, and embodiment in Europe and North America. Her recent work is con cerned with disinformation as the animating force behind community formation on social media platforms. Email: louise.ryan@ul.ie
MAJA PUCELJ
Maja Pucelj is an assistant professor at the Faculty of Organisational Studies in Novo mesto (FOŠ) in Slovenia. She studied at the Faculty of Public Administration and at the Faculty of Management, and completed her master’s degree at the Faculty of Government and European Studies and Faculty of European Law. She earned her first doctorate from Alma Mater Europaea – ISH in the field of humanities and is cur rently completing her second doctorate at the Faculty of Government and European Studies in the field of international studies. Before joining FOŠ, Pucelj worked as a consultant for the Minister of Education, Science and Sport. She is the author of nu merous works in the field of integration of Muslims in Western countries. Email: maja.pucelj@fos-unm.si
MATTIAS IRVING
Mattias Irving is a Master student in intellectual history and a journalistic researcher, monitoring and teaching about Swedish far-right extremism, and Muslim and Jew ish minority rights issues. Email: mattias@irving.se
MERSIHA SMAILOKIKJ
Mersiha Smailovikj is a human rights activist, lawyer, and humanitarian. She earned her Master’s degree in international law at “Iustinianus Primus” Law Faculty in Skopje. Her research and activism interests focus on discrimination against Mus lims and Islamophobia, gender equality, rights of ethnic groups, and advocating for the rights of refugees and migrants. Email: mersiha.s@legis.mk
NADA DOSTI
Nada Dosti has been the author of the Albania national report of the European Islamophobia Report since 2019. She is a PhD student in social media studies at the Social Sciences University of Ankara (ASBU) and holds a master’s degree in English teaching from the University of Tirana, Albania, and a second master’s degree in me dia and communication studies from the Faculty of Communication, Ankara Uni versity, Turkey. With an experience of thirteen years as a journalist and an activist try ing to be a voice for Muslim women in Albania, Dosti responds publicly to Islamo phobic attacks in media—especially on the topic of the hijab—by giving interviews and participating in public debates. Email: nada.dosti@gmail.com
NADIA JONES-GAILANI
Nadia Jones-Gailani is an associate professor and head of department at the De partment of Gender Studies, Central European University in Vienna, Austria. 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
OLIVER WACKERLIG
Oliver Wäckerlig studied sociology and religious studies at the University of Zu rich. He worked as a research associate and assistant at the Department of Religious Studies, where he also received his doctorate. Since 2018 he has been working at the Swiss Institute for Pastoral Sociology (SPI). His research interests include Islamo phobia, religion and the public sphere, and religion and health. Wäckerlig wrote his dissertation on “Networked Islamophobia” (Transcript, 2019) which focused on the transatlantic network of anti-Muslim groups. Email: o.waeckerlig@skalderberg.ch
RICHARD MCNEIL-WILLSON
Richard McNeil-Willson is a research fellow at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs, Leiden University, The Hague, and a Max Weber Fellow at the Robert Schu man Centre for Advanced Studies, European University, Florence. His research crit ically explores counter-extremism in Europe, including its tensions with human and civil rights, and its links to state violence and Islamophobia. He has worked on sev eral European Commission-funded academic projects on counter-extremism policy, and supported the European Commission directly in developing EU responses to far right violence. McNeil-Willson holds a Research Council PhD from the University of Exeter, additional degrees from the universities of Edinburgh, Durham, and Exe ter, and visiting fellowships at the universities of Aarhus and Scuola Normale Supe riore di Pisa. Email: richard@mcneilwillson.eu
SARA EZABE MALLIUE
Sara Ezabe Malliue is a lawyer. She holds a Master of Advocacy degree and a Mas ter 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 pro ject 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. Email: Saraev96@gmail.com
SERGIO GRACIA
Sergio Gracia studied law at the University of Córdoba. He holds a Master’s de gree in “Terrorist Phenomenology: Bioterrorism, Epidemiological Prevention, Cy berterrorism, and Chemical Threats” from the Faculty of Sciences of Granada. He is the director of CINVED (Centro Investigación de Extrema Derecha). Gracia prac ticed law in Casa Árabe Córdoba and studied at the Department of Constitutional Law. He has extensive complementary education and practical experience in the faith and plurality fields, such as: renewal of religious thought, political Islam in Europe; social changes in the Arab world, Islamic Feminism, fundamental rights and finally the extreme right. He is an academic collaborator with various public and private in stitutions in Spain. Gracia frequently acts as the invited expert commentator for dif ferent national and international media outlets on international relations and right wing violence issues. Email: consultas@cinved.com
ZORA HESOVA
Zora Hesová is a research fellow at the Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Acad emy 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 phi losophy of Abu Hamid al-Ghazali and articles on Islam in Europe, religion and pop ulism, the Arab Spring, and Islamophobia. Email: Zora.Hesova@ff.cuni.cz
ZUBAIR AHMAD
Zubair Ahmad studied political science, religious studies, and psychoanalysis at the Goethe University Frankfurt and the Institut d’études politiques in Lyon. After research stays at the University of Johannesburg, Columbia University, and the Clus ter of Excellence “Normative Orders,” he joined the Berlin Graduate School Mus lim Cultures and Societies (Freie Universität Berlin) as a doctoral fellow in 2015. His postgraduate studies trace the imperial and colonial histories of the present vis-à-vis Germany’s government of Islam. In addition, Ahmad is engaged in the Young Islam Conference, an anti-racist and empowerment platform in Berlin. Email: zubair@zedat.fu-berlin.de