Berkley Center

Marjorie Mandelstam Balzer is a research professor in the School of Foreign Service, co-convener of the Indigenous Studies Working Group, and a Berkley Center faculty fellow. She has been at Georgetown since 1987 in the Center for Eurasian, Russian and East European Studies (CERES) and the Anthropology Department, and has twice been a Doyle Faculty Fellow through the Berkley Center. She is editor of the Taylor and Francis journal Anthropology and Archeology of Eurasia and is author or editor of six books on Russia, Central Asia, and the Circumpolar North. Her research interests focus on the intersections of religion, politics, ecology, human rights, and comparative indigenous activism. Her latest book, based on fieldwork in three republics, is Galvanizing Nostalgia: Indigeneity and Sovereignty in Siberia (Cornell University Press, 2021).

Katherine Marshall, a senior fellow at Georgetown University’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs, leads the center’s work on religion and global development. She is also a professor of the practice of development, conflict, and religion in the Walsh School of Foreign Service, teaching diverse courses on the ethics of development work and mentoring students at many levels. She helped to create and now serves as the executive director of the World Faiths Development Dialogue, an NGO that works to enhance bridges between different sectors and institutions. In September 2022, she was appointed as a member of the Advisory Committee on Voluntary Foreign Aid at the U.S. Agency for International Development. Marshall has five decades of experience on a variety of development issues in Africa, Latin America, East Asia, and the Middle East, particularly those facing the world’s poorest countries. She was a World Bank officer from 1971 to 2006, and she led the World Bank’s faith and ethics initiative between 2000 and 2006. Marshall is a member of the Working Group on Child Rights and Family Values and the Working Group on Displaced Persons and Hospitality to the Stranger, both part of the Culture of Encounter Project.

Dr. Sudipta Roy is a senior researcher at the World Faiths Development Dialogue and a research fellow at the Georgetown University Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs. He is a comparative education specialist with a Ph.D. in international and comparative education policy studies from Indiana University, Bloomington. He also directs the American Institute of Bangladesh Studies (AIBS), a consortium of higher education institutions that promotes education diplomacy between the United States and Bangladesh. Roy’s current research addresses the intersection of formal and informal education, religion, and international development, particularly in South/Southeast Asia. His recent publications include comparative case studies and journal articles on social cohesion, mis/disinformation, freedom of religion or belief, faith-based education, and strategic religious engagement. Prior to joining WFDD, he taught education foundation and international education courses at Colby College, Indiana University Bloomington, and Indiana University Purdue University, Indianapolis. Roy's awards and grants include the Fulbright fellowship, Mellon Innovating International Research and Teaching grant, School of Education Fellowship at IU, AIBS resident fellowship, Santosh Jain Memorial award, and several travel grants. Roy grew up in Bangladesh, where he obtained bachelor and master’s degrees in English from the University of Dhaka.