ADA MULLOL MARIN
Ada Mullol Marin is a journalist and researcher specialised in the Arab world and international relations. She holds a master’s degree in Arab studies from George town University and in international relations from the Barcelona Institute of Inter national Studies (IBEI). Mullol is currently a research assistant at IBEI, and previ ously was a visiting researcher at the University of Birmingham, where she published extensively on Muslim communities in Europe and Islamophobia (Euro-Islam). She has been a political affairs intern at the United Nations (UN) and a Schuman trainee in the European Parliament, where she focused on Middle Eastern and North Afri can countries. Previously, she was a junior research fellow at the European Institute of the Mediterranean (IEMed) and a research assistant at Georgetown University. Mullol has published in several newspapers, magazines, and online media, and was the coordinator of the book Islamism/s: Islam and Politics in a Global World (in Cata lan). She has been awarded with reporting and research fellowships by the University of California-Davis (Muslim Women and the Media Training Institute), the College of Europe, the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ), and the United Nations Foundation. Her areas of interests include Islam in the West, Islamophobia, human rights and gender equality, socio-political developments in the Middle East, foreign policies, security, conflict resolution, and the role of media. Email: adamullol@gmail.com Twitter: @AdaMullol
ADEM FERIZAJ
Adem Ferizaj is a PhD candidate at the Centre for Gender Studies at SOAS Uni versity of London. His dissertation is an epistemological study of the roles of Mus lim-majority 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, particularly in Romania, the construction of modern identi ties, the image of the Other, and the relationship between self-image and Otherness. 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 (Istan bul: Isis Press, 2015). Email: adriana.tamasan@gmail.com
ALEXANDRA SOPA
ALEXANDROS SAKELLARIOU
Alexandros Sakellariou teaches 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 Univer sity. He has extensive research experience in large-scale EU projects. Since 2011 he has been working on young people’s socio-political engagement, young people’s 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 2020, he has been teaching as an associate professor of international relations in the Balkan Re search Institute at Trakya University, Edirne, Turkey. Currently, Huseyinoglu is the editor of the Journal of Balkan Research Institute (JBRI). Among others, Huseyino glu’s main research interests include human rights of minorities, migration studies, Turkish-Greek relations, the Muslim Turkish minority of Western Thrace, Islam in Europe, and Islamophobia. Email: alihuseyinoglu@trakya.edu.tr
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 of 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 research focuses on Orientalism, Occidentalism, Islamophobia, postcolonial studies, Ottoman-European relations, Islamic religious education in non-Islamic countries, and the 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
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. Kallis has published extensively on the history of fascism and the radical right; the rise of far-right extremism in Greece and Germany; the main stream-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 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 Arabic Philology and Turkic Studies Departments, respectively, at Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”. Since 2001 he has been a faculty member 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 Ottoman herit age in the Balkans and Bulgaria’s Muslims, he is an accomplished writer and transla tor with more than thirty translations of poetry and prose to his credit. Email: ashakir@yahoo.com & ashakir@sabanciuniv.edu
DANIEL VEKONY
Dániel Vékony, PhD, is an assistant professor at the Institute for Global Studies at the Corvinus University of Budapest. He received his PhD in International Rela tions in 2017 from Corvinus University. His main research focus is Muslims and Is lam in Europe. Vékony was part of the European Union’s Horizon 2020 GREASE – Radicalisation, Secularism and the Governance of Religion: Bringing Together Di verse Perspectives research consortium. He is the author of numerous journal arti cles and book chapters; his latest paper, co-authored by Edgunas Racius and Marat Ilyasov, is titled “Dynamics in State-Religion Relations in Postcommunist Central Eastern Europe and Russia” and was published in Religion, State and Society in 2022. Email: daniel.vekony@uni-corvinus.hu
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 foreign investment. Tessieri is the editor of Migrant Tales, a community blog he founded in 2007. He is the 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 community in the city of Mikkeli in Eastern Finland. He was formerly a board member of the European Network Against Racism (2016-2019) and in 2022 became a member of the European Network on Religion & Belief. Email: editor@migranttales.net
FARID HAFEZ
Farid Hafez is Distinguished Class of 1955 Visiting Professor of International Studies at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, and non-resident sen ior researcher at Georgetown University’s The Bridge Initiative at the School of For eign Service. He defended his habilitation thesis titled “Islam-Politics in the Second Republic of Austria” at the University of Salzburg in 2019. In 2017, he was a Ful bright visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley and in 2014, a vis iting 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 Islamopho bia 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 140 publications in leading journals such as Politics and Religion, Patterns of Prejudice, and German Politics and Society. Hafez’s latest publication is the edited international volume The Rise of Global Islamophobia in the War on Terror: Coloniality, Race, and Islam, co-edited with Naved Bakali (Manchester University Press, 2022). Email: fh6@williams.edu
HIKMET KARCIC
Hikmet Karčić is a Research Associate at the Institute for Research of Crimes Against Humanity and International Law, University of Sarajevo. He has a BA and LL.M. from the Faculty of Law, University of Sarajevo, and a PhD in Political Sci ence and Sociology from the International University of Sarajevo. Karčić is the au thor of the acclaimed book Torture, Humiliate, Kill: Inside the Bosnian Serb Camp Sys tem (University of Michigan Press, 2022). He was the 2017 Auschwitz Institute for Peace and Reconciliation (AIPR) and Keene State College (KSC) global fellow. His writing on genocide denial and atrocity prevention has appeared in Haaretz, News week, and Arab News. Email: hikmet.karcic@institut-genocid.unsa.ba
INES BOLANOS SOMOANO
Inés Bolaños Somoano is a PhD candidate at the Political and Social Sciences Department of the European University Institute (Italy), and a visiting researcher at the Institute for Security and Global Affairs, Leiden University (Netherlands). Her thesis looks at the emergence and consolidation of prevention of radicaliza tion and violent extremism (P/CVE) as a distinct policy field in the European Un ion. Her secondary focus is on European right-wing extremism and online radicali sation. Bolaños-Somoano is a qualitative researcher and has been involved in several researcher groups such as the Muslim World Working Group, the International Re lations Working Group, and Thoughts For Europe. She also has ethnographic and professional experience within institutions, having completed a traineeship at the Eu ropean Commission, DG Home, where she worked on procurement and evaluation of internal security projects. Previously, Bolaños-Somoano pursued a Bachelor’s de gree in English Studies in Oviedo (Spain) and an Erasmus Mundus Master of Arts in European Studies at the universities in Göttingen (Germany), Olomouc (Czech Re public), and Osaka (Japan). Email: ines.bolanos@eui.eu
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
JEROEN VLUG
Jeroen Vlug, PhD, is a researcher at Movisie, a Dutch research institute on social issues, where he specializes in discrimination, racism, and Islamophobia. He is also a researcher for Platform Inclusion & Community (KIS), a program jointly hosted by Movisie and Verwey-Jonker Institute, where he conducts research on new migra tion, social stability, inclusion and access, and participation. In that capacity, he ad vises policymakers in municipalities and other government institutions, politicians, professionals in civil society organizations, migrant organizations, and entrepreneurs. Vlug is executive editor at the Cross-cultural Human Rights Review, a peer-reviewed academic journal affiliated to VU University Amsterdam. He holds degrees in reli gious studies and Islamic intellectual history from VU University Amsterdam and Freie Universität Berlin. Vlug obtained his PhD in civilization studies from Ibn Hal dun University in Istanbul with a comparative study on the philosophical grounds of human rights in Islam and the West. He regularly publishes and lectures on human rights, Islam, religion in modern society, and Muslims in Europe. Email: jeroenvlug@gmail.com
KAWTAR NAJIB
Kawtar Najib is a lecturer in human geography at the University of Liverpool, United Kingdom. Her research interests center on social and urban geographies of inequality and discrimination using both quantitative and qualitative methods. Na jib explores issues of social and spatial justice, and was the principal researcher of the SAMA (Spaces of Anti-Muslim Acts) project in Paris and London, funded by the Eu ropean 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 Islamo phobia across spatial scales. Email: Kawtar.Najib@liverpool.ac.uk
LAMIES NASSRI
Lamies Nassri has a MA in language psychology from the University of Co penhagen, where she specialized in language use, identity, and power relations. She has worked in the field of anti-racism for several years, focusing on Islamophobia in Denmark. Nassri is the project manager at the Centre for Muslims’ Rights in Den mark (CEDA), a Danish NGO that seeks to raise awareness and address Islamopho bia in Denmark. She has written and contributed to several international reports on issues of racism and discrimination in Denmark. Nassri also regularly writes op-eds in mainstream and alternative media, and campaigns on issues pertaining to Mus lims’ rights in Denmark. Email: Lamies@ceda.nu
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
Dr. Maja Pucelj is an assistant professor at the Faculty of Organisational Studies in Slovenia. She studied at the Faculty of Public Administration and Faculty of Man agement, and completed her master’s degree at the Faculty of Government and Eu ropean Studies and Faculty of European Law. Pucelj earned her first doctorate from Alma Mater Europaea – ISH in the field of humanities and is currently completing her second doctorate at the Faculty of Government and European Studies in the field of international studies. Before joining Faculty of Organisational Studies she worked as a consultant for the Minister of Education, Science and Sports in Slovenia. Pucelj is the author of numerous works in the field of integration of Muslims in Western countries. Email: maja.pucelj@fos-unm.si
MERSIHA SMAILOVIKJ
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, the rights of ethnic groups, and advocating for the rights of refugees and migrants. Email: mersiha.s@legis.mk
NEJRA KADIC MESKIC
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. She graduated from the School of Business and Economics at University of Sarajevo. Meškić has twelve years of experience as an executive director and program leader in the fields of human rights, minority rights, migration and integration, culture of dialogue, gender equality, and youth policies. She is a trainer on teamwork and leadership, and has worked in the civil society sec tor in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and abroad. In 2013, Meškić received an award for her contribution to the achievement of gender equality from the Parlia ment of Bosnia and Herzegovina. E-mail: nejra.kadic.sa@gmail.com
SARA EZABE MALLIUE
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 titled “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, Cyber terrorism, and Chemical Threats” from the Faculty of Sciences of Granada. He is the president of CINVED (Asociación Centro Investigación de Extrema Derecha), a re search centre on the extreme right in Spain. Gracia practised law in Casa Árabe Cór doba and studied at the Department of Constitutional Law. He has extensive com plementary education and practical experience in the faith and plurality fields, for ex ample in the renewal of religious thought, political Islam in Europe, social changes in the Arab world, Islamic feminism, fundamental rights, and the extreme right. Gra cia is an academic collaborator with various public and private institutions in Spain, and he frequently acts as an invited expert commentator for different national and international media outlets on international relations, right-wing violence, and hate speech 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