Asaf Savaş Akat is a Professor of Economics at Bilgi University in Istanbul, of which he has been president in 1996. He also taught at other two major Istanbul Universities: Marmara and Istanbul University. He is member of the board of editors of several journals and periodicals and of economic organizations. 1993-96 he was founding member, deputy president and candidate for Istanbul of YDH – Yeni Demokrasi Hareketi (liberal political party). Akat is frequent commentator on political and social questions in the Turkish media, Daily Vartan and NTV television. Among his publications İktisadi Analiz (Economic Analysis) (2009).
Yaman Akdeniz is Professor of Law at Istanbul Bilgi University since 2011. Before he was lecturer at the University of Leeds. Moreover, he is the founder and director of Cyber-Rights & Cyber-Liberties (UK), a non-profit civil liberties organisation set up in January 1997. He received a grant from the Open Society Institute for a project entitled Combating Internet Censorship and Blocking Orders through the Turkish Legal System and Courts (2010-2012) and was appointed as an expert to the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCHR) office in relation to racist content on the Internet in November 2005. His research interests and publications concern the legal implications of the internet and the law regarding free speech and privacy on the net.
Cengiz Aktar is a Professor at Bahçeşehir University and head of the Department of European Union Relations. He obtained his PhD in economics from Sorbonne. Between 1989 and 1994 he worked as vice president of the intergovernmental advisory board established of the UN for migration politics of the EU. Between 1994 and 1999, he worked as the director of the UN agency of Slovenia. He has written numerous books on Europe and relations between Turkey and Europe. He is currently columnist for the newspaper Vatan.
Kerem Altıparmak is the Director of the Human Rights Centre at the Faculty of Political Sciences at Ankara University where he teaches human rights law. He holds a PhD in Human Rights Law at the University of Leeds. At present he is working with the Human Rights Joint Platform on respectively ‘Monitoring of the Implementation of the ECtHR Judgements inTurkey’ and ‘From Impunity to Accountability’. His research interests include ECHR, freedom of expression, prohibition of torture, theories of rights, and impunity. His recent English publication include The European System for the Protection of Human Rights in Crisis: The End of the Road? (2009), Human Rights Act: Extra-territorial Application (2008), Internet: Restricted Access – A Critical Assessment of Internet Content Regulation and Censorship in Turkey’ (with Yaman Akdeniz), After Sahin: The Debate on Headscarves is not Over (with Onur Karahanogullari, 2006).
Marco Ansaldo is the Vatican correspondent of the Italian daily La Repubblica. He is a member of the scientific committee of the geopolitical journal Limes. He teaches journalism at LUISS University in Rome and he is a collaborator of the German weekly magazine Die Zeit and the RAI channel Radio3. He wrote five books on international issues (for Einaudi and Rizzoli), including one on the attack on Karol Wojtyla (Kill the Pope. The Truth about John Paul ). He is one of the most authoritative experts on Turkey in Italy. In 2004, he founded the Forum for Italian-Turkish Dialogue, today chaired by the two foreign ministries.
Albena Azmanova is Associate Professor of Political and Social Thought at the University of Kent in Brussels where she heads the programme in International Political Economy. Her research spans from political judgment and deliberative public policy to critique of contemporary capitalism. Among her recent publications are The Scandal of Reason: A Critical Theory of Political Judgment (2012), and Reclaiming Democracy: Judgment, Responsibility and the Right to Politics (2015, co-edited with Mihaela Mihai), as well as publications in academic journals and the mass media. She has worked as political consultant to international institutions such as the United Nations, the Council of Europe, the European Parliament and the European Commission on issues of human rights and the accession of post-communist countries to the EU.
Meysam Badamchi earned his PhD from LUISS University in Rome. Since 2013 he is postdoctoral research fellow at the Center for Modern Turkish Studies at Istanbul Şehir University. His areas of interest are contemporary Iranian, Turkish and Anglo-American political philosophies. He is especially interested in the works of Muslim Reformist thinkers, the liberalism of John Rawls, and ethnic minorities’ rights. He has translated Will Kymlicka’s Contemporary Political Philosophy from English into Persian (forthcoming, in collaboration of Mohammed Mobasheri). He has a political theory weblog in Persian, called Nikomakhus. His recent publication in English: “Reasonable, Rationality, and Government: The Liberal Political Thought of Mehdi Haeri Yazdi”, in Iranian Studies (2014); “Political liberalism for post-Islamist, Muslim-majority societies”, in Philosophy & Social Criticism (2015).
Seyla Benhabib is Eugene Meyer Professor of Political Science and Philosophy at Yale University and was Director of its Program in Ethics, Politics and Economics. She has been awarded the Ernst Bloch Prize in 2009 and the Meister Eckhart Price in 2014. Her research ranges from discussions of communicative ethics, to democracy and difference, to identities, allegiances and affinities, and gender, citizenship and immigration. Among her recent publications are The Claims of Culture: Equality and Diversity in the Global Era (2002), The Rights of Others. Aliens, Citizens and Residents (2004) and Another Cosmopolitanism: Hospitality, Sovereignty and Democratic Iterations, with responses by Jeremy Waldron, Bonnie Honig and Will Kymlicka (2006), Politics in Dark Times. Encounters with Hannah Arendt (2010) and Dignity in Adversity. Human Rights in Troubled Times (2011). She is Chair of the Scientific Committee of Reset-Dialogues on Civilizations and member of the Executive Committee of Istanbul Seminars.
Murat Borovalı is Associate Professor at Bilgi University. He holds a PhD in political philosophy from University of Manchester. Among his most recent publications are “Turkish Secularism and Islam: A Difficult Dialogue with the Alevis”, in Philosophy & Social Criticism (2014), “A Legitimate Restriction of Freedom? The issue of the headscarf in Turkey,” in E. F. Keyman (ed.), Remaking Turkey: Globalization, Alternative Modernities and Democracy (2006), ‘John Rawls ve Siyaset Felsefesi’ (John Rawls and Political Philosophy, 2003) and ‘Sunuş’, Robert Nozick Anarşi, Devlet ve Ütopya içinde (2000).
Giovanna Borradori is Professor and Chair of the Philosophy Department at Vassar College. She specializes in European philosophy of the 19th and 20th century. In recent years, her research has been focusing on the intersection of aesthetics and politics, terrorism and the media, and new forms of political agency stemming from popular protest, in the US and around the world. She is the editor of Recoding Metaphysics: The New Italian Philosophy (1988) and the author of two books: The American Philosopher (1993) and Philosophy in a Time of Terror. Dialogues with Jürgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida (2003), translated in eighteen languages.
Giancarlo Bosetti is the Director and one of the founders of Reset-Dialogues on Civilizations. He is the editor-in-chief of the online journal www.resetdoc.org and of Reset, a cultural magazine he founded in 1993. He was vice-editor-in-chief of the Italian daily L’Unità. He is currently a columnist for the Italian daily La Repubblica and he has been teaching at University La Sapienza, and University Roma Tre. Among his books La lezione di questo secolo, a book-interview with Karl Popper, Cattiva maestra televisione, (ed.) with essays by Karl Popper, John Condry and Pope John Paul II, Il Fallimento dei laici furiosi (2009). He recently wrote an introduction to the volume Omnia mutantur. La scoperta filosofica del pluralismo culturale (2013), with contributions of R. Bernstein, S. Veca, M. Ricciardi.
Cemil Boyraz is an academic staff at the Department of International Relations at İstanbul Bilgi University. He holds a PhD in political science with a dissertation about the political economy of nationalism, analyzing the case of the post-1980 privatization process in Turkey. His research interests concern Turkish politics and foreign policy, theories of nationalism, international political economy and labor movement. He has an article in Turkish Studies titled “The Justice and Development Party in Turkish Politics: Islam, Democracy and State” and several book reviews in the same journal, and an edited book on the political participation of the youth in Turkey published in 2010. He is currently working on the relation between Islam and democracy, and political reactions to the hegemony of neoliberalism after the 1980s.
Can Cemgil has been teaching International Relations, Political Theory, and International Political Economy at the University of Sussex and Istanbul Bilgi University, the Institute of Social Sciences. He obtained his PhD in International Relations at the University of Sussex, Department of International Relations. Among his research interests are international relations theory, social and political philosophy, and more specifically the social and political developments in the Middle East. He has recently co-authored an article in the journal Globalizations. Another co-authored article won third prize in the Sabanci International Research Awards. He also translated and edited numerous books in the wider field of social sciences, both in English and in Turkish.
Georges Corm is Professor at Saint-Joseph University, Institut de sciences politiques, Beirut, Lebanon, where he teaches MA Seminars in “International Economic Cooperation”, “Public Policies in the Arab World”, “Conflict Dynamics in the Middle East” and “Arab Contemporary Political Thought”. In December 1998, he was appointed Minister of Finance of the Lebanese Republic (up to October 2000). He has published extensively in Arabic, French and English on economic topics: Unreachable development (1982); Debt and Development (co-author) 1982; Le nouveau désordre économique mondial (1993); Le nouveau gouvernement du monde (2010). He also published on the history of the Middle East and its relations with European history: Orient-Occident. La fracture imaginaire; La question religieuse au XXIè siècle (2006); History of the Middle East. From Antiquity to Present Day (2010); L’Europe et le mythe de l’Occident (2009); Pour une approche profane des conflits (2010); Pensée et politique dans le monde arabe XIXè-XXè siècles (2015).
Boğaç Erozan, Associate Professor, he received a BA degree from the Department of Political Science and International Relations at Boğaziçi University in 1994 and a Ph.D. degree from the Department of Political Science at the University of Minnesota in 2005. He has been a faculty member in the Department of International Relations at Istanbul Bilgi University since 2001. He also taught courses on Political Theory at Koç University. His research interests are mainly Turkish politics, political theory, intellectual and conceptual history, history of political science. He published two books Ahmet Ağaoğlu ve Hukuk-I Esasiye Ders Notları, 1926-1927 (2012); İlter Turan’a Armağan [Festschrift to İlter Turan] (2015), co-edited with Nihal İncioğlu and Pınar Uyan Semerci, and several articles on Turkish political history and political theory.
Alessandro Ferrara is Professor of Political Philosophy at the University of Rome “Tor Vergata” and is the former President of the Italian Association of Political Philosophy. Over the past few years, he has investigated the sources and justifications of normativity after the linguistic turn and has worked at outlining an authentic view of validity as well as a judgment view of justice in the domain of political philosophy. He is the author of Modernity and Authenticity, Reflective Authenticity, Justice and Judgment, and The Force of the Example. He recently published The Democratic Horizon. Hyperpluralism and the Renewal of Political Liberalism (New York, Cambridge, 2014) and “Democracy and the absolute power of disembedded financial markets” in Azmanova/Mihai (eds.), Reclaiming Democracy (2015). He is a member of Reset-Dialogues and the Executive Committee of Istanbul Seminars.
Abdou Filali-Ansary was Director of the Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations, Aga Khan University in London. He served from 1984 to 2001 as the founding director of the King Abdul-Aziz Foundation for Islamic Studies and Human Sciences in Casablanca, Morocco, having previously taught modern philosophy in the Faculty of Letters in Rabat. Filali-Ansary has contributed widely to academic discourses on democratisation and civil society in the Middle East and in 1993, co-founded the bilingual Arabic and French journal Prologues: revue maghrébine du livre. His work includes a translation into French of Ali Abderraziq’s landmark book, Islam and the Foundations of Political Power (1994), and an essay entitled Is Islam Hostile to Secularism? (1999). He is a member of the Scientific Committee of Reset-Dialogues and of the Executive Committee of Istanbul Seminars.
Patrizio Fondi is the Italian Ambassador to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. From 2008 to 2013 has served as the Diplomatic Advisor of the Minister of Cultural Heritage and Activities of Italy. Before he served as the Deputy Permanent Representative to UNESCO in Paris, Deputy Head of Mission at the Embassies of Italy in Stockholm and Tirana, Head of Office at the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Directorate General for Cultural Promotion and Cooperation, Directorate General for Political Affairs, Department for Development Cooperation), as well as Member of the Italian Mission to the United Nations in New York. He was decorated Official Knight of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Italy (2004) and with the Order of the Polar Star of the Kingdom of Sweden (2008).
Nina zu Fürstenberg is the founder and the Chair of Reset-Dialogues on Civilizations. She has been focusing for years on the study of Islam and on the promotion of intercultural dialogue. Her work is now particularly devoted to the communication of philosophical concepts and ideas through videos and video-interviews with thinkers and scholars from all over the world. She edited Euro-Islam. L’integrazione mancata by Bassam Tibi, Lumi dell’Islam. Nove intellettuali musulmani parlano di libertà and Europa laica e puzzle religioso with Krzysztof Michalski. She is the author of Chi ha paura di Tariq Ramadan. L’Europa di fronte al riformismo islamico (German version 2008) and edited a book by Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd on Testo sacro e libertà. Per una lettura critica del Corano.
Philippe Gaudin is Deputy Director of the European Institute of Religious Sciences at Sorbonne University, Paris. His research interests concern religion in the public sphere and secularism. Among his recent publications: “Enseignement des faits religieux et laïcité en France”, in Le défi de l’enseignement des faits religieux à l’école, réponses européennes et québécoises (2014); Vers une laïcité d’intelligence en France? L’enseignement des faits religieux comme politique publique d’éducation depuis les années 1980 (2014) ; Double défi pour l’école laïque: enseigner la morale et les faits religieux (2014).
Nilüfer Göle is Professor of Sociology at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris. She is Director of the project Europublicislam, funded by European Research Council (ERC). She works on Islamic visibility in European public spaces and the debates it engenders on religious and cultural difference. Her sociological approach aims to open up a new reading of modernity from a non-western perspective and a broader critique of Eurocentrism in the definitions of secular modernity. She is the author of Islam and Public Controversy in Europe (2014); En-quête de l’islam européen (forthcoming); Secular and Religious: Erosion of Frontiers (foryhcoming); Islam in Europe: The Lure of Fundamentalism and the Allure of Cosmopolitanism (2010). She is a member of Reset-Dialogues and of the Executive Committee of the Istanbul Seminars.
Manlio Graziano teaches Geopolitics and Geopolitics of Religions at Paris IV, at the American Graduate School in Paris, at SKEMA Business School and at Geneva Institute of Geopolitical Studies. He collaborates with Corriere della Sera (Milan), Limes (Rome), Il Mulino (Bologna) and International Affairs Forum (Washington DC). He is writing a book about the role of Catholics in American politics (In Rome We Trust, working title), which will be published in 2016 by Stanford University Press. His more recent Holy War and Holy Alliance: Religions and Global Disorder in the 21st century was published in Italian by Il Mulino in January 2015 and is forthcoming by Columbia University Press.
Mohammed Haddad currently holds the UNESCO Chair in Comparative Studies of Religion at La Manouba University in Tunis, where he has worked since 1995. He also chairs the Observatoire Arabe des Religions et des Libertés. His work attempts to reconcile Islamic tradition with modernity. Among his recent writings : Religions et réformes religieuses (2007); Les règles d’une pensée éclairée (2009); La notion de sécularité (2009); L’enseignement du fait religieux à l’ère de la mondialisation (2009); Petit traité d’histoire de religions (2010) ; L’islamisme tunisien (2011); Una riforma religiosa nell’Islam è ancora possibile? (2011).
Mohammed Hashas is a Postdoctoral Fellow at LUISS University of Rome and Adjunct Lecturer at the American University of Rome. He was a research fellow at Babylon Center for the Study of the Multicultural Society in Tilburg, the Netherlands (2010), and at the Center for European Islamic Thought at the University of Copenhagen (2011-2012). His academic concerns are the emerging European Islamic thought, Arab-Islamic political theology, and the ongoing socio-political and cultural transformations of the Arab societies, with a focus on Morocco. His papers so far have appeared with the Journal of Muslims of Europe, Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, and the Journal of Studia Islamica. He is currently co-editing a volume on Imams in Western Europe, and Mohamed Abed Al Jabri and the Future of the Arab World.
Cynthia Horan is Lecturer at the Department of Political Science at Yale University. She teaches courses on the politics of cities. Prior to teaching at Yale, she taught at the University of Toronto and Wesleyan University. Her research interests focus on the political economy of cities and urban regions in particular the politics of economic restructuring. She has published articles in Polity, Economic Geography, Journal of Urban Affairs well as in edited volumes on urban politics.
Micheline Ishay is Distinguished Professor of International Studies and Human Rights at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver. She is the founder of the university’s Human Rights Masters Degree Program, which she directed from 1995 to 2010. She has held visiting professorships at the University of Maryland’s Center for Democracy Collaborative (2004), and most recently Khalifa University in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates (2010-13). Her expertise is the study of human rights. She published History of Human Rights, from Ancient Times to the Globalization Era (2004, 2008), Human Rights Reader (1997, 2007) The Nationalism Reader (1995) and Internationalism and Its Betrayal (1995). Forthcoming: The Levant Express: The Arab Uprisings and the Future of Human Rights.
Ramin Jahanbegloo, an Iranian-Canadian philosopher, is the York-Noor Visiting Chair in Islamic Studies at York University and has previously been a researcher at the French Institute for Iranian Studies and a fellow at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University. He taught at the University of Toronto and at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies in New Delhi. In 2009, he won the Peace Prize from the United Nations Association in Spain. Jahanbegloo works to promote inter-cultural dialogue and advocates for non-violence. In April 2006 Dr. Jahanbegloo was arrested in Tehran Airport charged with preparing a velvet revolution in Iran and was placed in solitary confinement for four months. His works include Talking Architecture: Raj Rewal In Conversation With Ramin Jahanbegloo, The Clash of Intolerances, Talking India: Conversations with Ashis Nandy, and Iran: Between Tradition and Modernity. He just published Time Will Say Nothing.
Riva Kastoryano is Senior Research Fellow (CNRS) at the Centre de recherches internationales (CERI) at Sciences Po Paris. She holds a PhD in Sociology from EHESS. She taught at Harvard (Department of Social Studies) from 1984 to 1987 and has been teaching at Sciences Po since 1988. She was a research fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton (1997), the Wissenschaftskolleg in Berlin (1998), and the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard (2003-2004). She was a visiting professor at the New School for Social Research in New York from 2005 to 2011. Her research in political sociology focuses on Europe, nationalism, identities and communities. Her main publications: Turkey between Nationalism and Globalization (2013); An identity for Europe: the relevance of multiculturalism in EU construction (2009); Les codes de la différence: race, origine, religion : France, Allemagne, Etats-Unis (2005), Negotiating identities: states and immigrants in France and Germany (2002); Nationalismes en mutation en Méditerranée orientale (2002). She has just completed a book on Nationalism without territory.
Volker Kaul is a Research Fellow at the Center for Ethics and Global Politics at LUISS University in Rome. He was visiting fellow at the Department of Philosophy at Columbia University (2006). His work focuses on questions of personal identity and he is currently preparing a project on the nature of identity conflicts. He has written on child soldiers, diamond traders, suicide bombers and fundamentalists. Together with Alessandro Ferrara and David Rasmussen he edited the special issues of Philosophy & Social Criticism on the Reset-Dialogues Istanbul Seminars 2008-2014. Forthcoming article: “Are Fundamentalists Agents or Victims”, in Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Religious Pluralism” (EUI Working Papers). He is secretary of the Executive Committee and scientific coordinator of the Istanbul Seminars.
Ferda Keskin is Professor of Comparative Literature and Philosophy at Istanbul Bilgi University. He received his Ph.D. from Columbia University, and taught at Boğazici University from 1994 to 2002. His research and interest areas include Foucault, social and political philosophy, ethics, philosophy of social sciences and philosophy and literature. Ferda Keskin is the editor and co-translator of a 6-volume translation series from Foucault’s Dits et écrits into Turkish with an introduction for each volume. He is the co-editor of Pera Peras Poros: Espacement et temporalisation de l’étranger. Atelier avec et autour de Jacques Derrida. He is member of the Executive Committee of Istanbul Seminars.
Fuat Keyman is the Director of Istanbul Policy Center and Professor of International Relations at Sabanci University in Istanbul. His work focuses mainly on the theories of globalization and the notion of citizenship. He also studies the place of Turkey in world politics as well as the problems and the future of Turkey. He is a weekly contributor to Radikal. He is the author of Transforming Turkey in a Globalizing World: Democratization, Globalization, Europeanization (forthcoming), Competing Nationalism in Turkey (2010), Turkey in a Globalizing World (2010), Remaking Turkey, Globalization, Alternative Modernities and Democracy (2008), Turkish Politics in a Changing World (2007) and Citizenship in a Global World: European Questions and Turkish Experiences (2005).
Ivan Krastev is the Chairman of the Centre for Liberal Strategies in Sofia and Permanent Fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna. He is a founding board member of the European Council on Foreign Relations, a member of the advisory board of the ERSTE Foundation, a member of the advisory council of the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), and the European Cultural Foundation (ECF). He is also a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Democracy and Transit – Europäische Revue. His books include Democracy Disrupted. The Global Politics on Protest (2014); “In Mistrust We Trust: Can Democracy Survive When We Don’t Trust Our Leaders?” (2013); The Anti-American Century (2007) and Shifting Obsessions: Three Essays on the Politics of Anticorruption (2004). He is a co-author with Stephen Holmes of a forthcoming book on Russian politics.
Regina Kreide is a Professor of Political Theory at the Justus Liebig University in Giessen, Germany. In the fall 2009 she was a visiting associate professor and Theodor Heuss lecturer at the New School for Social Research in New York, in 2014 a guest professor at UAM Iztapalapa, Mexico City, Mexico. She is one of the directors of the Collaborative Research Center “Dynamics of Security” and leads a research project on “Roma Minority Formation in Modern European History”. She has published widely on global justice, human rights, international law and democracy. Her most recent publications include the Habermas-Handbook, together with H. Brunkhorst and C. Lafont (2016) and in Chinese for Social Sciences Academic Press International (forthcoming 2015); Transformation of Democracy: Crisis, Protest, and Legitimation, ed. with Robin Celikates and Tilo Wesche (2015). Her book “Global Justice and Political Practice” (in German) will appear in 2015.
Jonathan Laurence, Associate Professor of Political Science at Boston College, researches and writes about European politics, transatlantic relations and Islam in the West. Currently on sabbatical from Boston College, he is a. He is a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution (Washington, DC) and Term Member of the Council on Foreign Relations (New York City). He was the Daimler Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin in Fall 2012 and guest researcher at the Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin. Laurence is the author of The Emancipation of Europe’s Muslims (2012) and the co-author of Integrating Islam (2006).
Stephen Macedo is Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Politics and the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University. From 2001-2009, he was Director of the University Center for Human Values. He writes and teaches on political theory, ethics, public policy, and law, especially on topics related to liberalism, democracy and citizenship, diversity and civic education, religion and politics, and the family and sexuality. His current research, and forthcoming book, is Just Married: Same-Sex Couples, Monogamy, and the Future of Marriage (2015). As vice president of the American Political Science Association, he was first chair of its standing committee on Civic Education and Engagement and principal co-author of Democracy at Risk: How Political Choices Undermine Citizen Participation, and What We Can Do About It (2005). His other books include Diversity and Distrust: Civic Education in a Multicultural Democracy (2000); and Liberal Virtues: Citizenship, Virtue, and Community in Liberal Constitutionalism (1990).
Stefano Manservisi is currently Head of Cabinet of the is the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and Vice-President of the European Commission, Federica Mogherini. He joined the European Commission in 1983. From 1995 to 2000, he was Deputy Head and then Head of Cabinet to Commissioner M. Monti. In 2001 he was appointed Head of Cabinet for Romano Prodi, President of the European Commission, and stayed in that position until joining DG Development as Director General. In July 2010 he was appointed Director General of DG Home Affairs. Stefano Manservisi holds a law degree from the University of Bologna and also studied at the University of Paris I Panthéon – Sorbonne, and the University of Strasbourg.
Nadia Marzouki holds a PhD in political science from the Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris (2008). She is a researcher at the CNRS and member of CESPRA. Her research examines the debates about Islam in the United States and in Europe, and the issue of the religious freedom in the West and North Africa. She was a postdoctoral researcher in the Middle East Studies Centre of the University of Yale (2008-2010) and Jean Monnet Fellow at the European University Institute in Florence (2010-2012). Since 2012, she is part of the research team Religiowest project, funded by the European Research Council at the European University Institute. She is the author of L’Islam, une religion américaine? (2013). She co-edited with Olivier Roy, Religious conversions in the Mediterranean World, (2013). She is currently editing a book with Olivier Roy and Duncan McDonnell on religion and populism.
Soli Özel is Professor of International Relations and Political Science at Istanbul Kadir Has University. Currently, he is a columnist for Haberturk newspaper, a frequent contributor to The Washington Post’s “Post Global”, and the former editor of the Turkish edition of Foreign Policy, a journal published by the Carnegie Endowment in the USA. He is a regular contributor to German Marshall Fund’s web site’s “ON Turkey” series and writes a bimonthly column for Italy’s Espresso magazine. He is senior advisor to the chairman of the Turkish Industrialists’ and Businessmen’s Association (TUSIAD). Özel is the co-author of Rebuilding a partnership: Turkish-American relations in a new era (2009). His latest published work is co-authored with Serhat Guvenc and entitled “NATO and Turkey in the Post-Cold War World: Between Abandonment and Entrapment”.
Max Pensky is Professor of Philosophy and Department Chair at the Binghamton University. His research focuses on modern and contemporary social and political philosophy, critical theory, contemporary continental philosophy, philosophy of law and international relations. His publications include The Ends of Solidarity: Discourse Theory in Ethics and Politics (2008), Globalizing Critical Theory (2005), Old Europe, New Europe, Core Europe: Transatlantic Relations After the Iraq War (co-edited with Daniel Levy and John Torpey, 2005), The Actuality of Adorno (1997), and several translations of Jürgen Habermas such as Time of Transitions and The Postnational Constellation. Among his last publications: “Amnesties and Jus Post Bellum,” in Larry May, (ed.), Jus Post Bellum, (2013).
David Rasmussen is Professor of Philosophy at Boston College. His fields of interest are contemporary continental philosophy, social and political philosophy. He is the founder and editor-in-chief of Philosophy & Social Criticism. His books include: Reading Habermas; Universalism vs. Communitarianism in Ethics; Handbook of Critical Theory; Jürgen Habermas: The Foundations of the Habermas Project; Jürgen Habermas: Law and Politics; Jürgen Habermas: Ethics; Jürgen Habermas: Epistemology and Truth; Critical Theory Vol. I-IV. He currently prepares a book on John Rawls. He is a member of the Executive Committee of Istanbul Seminars.
Ilay Romain Örs is the Vice Rector of Bilgi University, the Dean of Graduate School of Social Sciences and a faculty member at the Department of International Relations at Istanbul Bilgi University. She earned her PhD at Harvard University in Social Anthropology and Middle Eastern Studies. While her ethnographic work centers on the Greek Orthodox community of Istanbul in Greece (Rum Polites), her broader research interests and publication topics include minorities, migration, cosmopolitanism, pluralizing modernities, consumption, regional and urban studies in Istanbul, Greece and the Mediterranean.
Larbi Sadiki is Associate Professor of International Relations at Qatar University. He holds a PhD from the Australian National University and was lecturer at Exeter University and Westminster University. Sadiki specializes in democratization in the Arab Middle East and lectures on Arab democratization and human rights, dialogue of civilizations, and Middle East–EU relations. He is author of the recently published Routledge Handbook of the Arab Spring (2015), Rethinking Arab Democratization: Elections without Democracy (2009/2011) and The Search for Arab Democracy: Discourses and Counter-Discourses (2004). He is currently completing three books: one on the Tunisian revolution, another on Nahda Party and democracy in Tunisia and the last on Hamas and democracy.
Remzi Sanver is the Rector of the Istanbul Bilgi University, where he also is a Professor at the Murat Sertel Center for Advanced Economic Studies. His research foci include game theory, social choice, and economic design. He is the recepient of numerous awards, most recently the Turkish Academy of Sciences Distinguished Young Scientist Award in 2007. Sanver has published extensively international journals such as Social Choice and Welfare, Mathematical Social Sciences, Public Choice, Games and Economic Behavior and Electoral Studies. Moreover he is the author of Handbook on Approval Voting.
Debora Tonelli is a researcher at the Center for Religious Sciences at Bruno Kessler Foundation, Trento, Italy. Moreover she is lecturer at the Faculty of Social Sciences at the Pontifical Gregorian University (Rome) and Professor of Political Philosophy and Politics and Religion at the Pontifical University of St. Anselm (Rome). She holds a PhD in political philosophy from Roma Tre University in Rome (2005), with a thesis on the genesis of the concept of standards and a PhD in theology at the University of Münster Westfälische (2012), with a thesis on divine violence in the Old Testament. She received a DAAD scholarship in Frankfurt under the supervision of Axel Honneth (2003-2004). Among her publications: Immagini di violenza divina nell’AT (2014); Il Decalogo. Uno sguardo retrospettivo (2010).
Ömer Turan is Associate Professor in the Department of International Relations and Political Science at Istanbul Bilgi University. His research interests include socio-political theory, Turkish politics, and historical sociology. His writings have been published in numerous volumes, including Dialogue and ‘Dignity of Difference’: Building Capacity for Otherness, edited by Mojtaba Mahdavi and W. Andy Knight, and Remaking Turkey: Globalization, Alternative Modernities and Democracy edited by Fuat Keyman.
Barış Ünlü completed his undergraduate and master’s degrees in economics and political science at Ankara University, Faculty of Political Sciences. He obtained his PhD in the department of sociology at SUNY Binghamton University. He is currently assistant professor at Ankara University, Faculty of Political Sciences.
Diego von Vacano is Professor of Political Theory at the Department of Political Science at Texas A&M University. He has been a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University. He was also a Member of the School of Social Science of the Institute for Advanced Study, in Princeton, NJ, during 2008-2009. He received his doctorate in politics from Princeton University and his master’s degree in public policy from Harvard University. He works mainly in comparative political theory (modern Latin American and European political thought) and also in immigration ethics, race and ethnicity. He is the author of The Color of Citizenship Race, Modernity and Latin American/Hispanic Political Thought (2012) and The Art of Power (2006), as well as of various articles, including a forthcoming piece on “Comparative Political Theory” for the Annual Review of Political Science.