Berkley Center

José Casanova is one of the world's leading scholars in the sociology of religion and a senior fellow at the Berkley Center, where his work focuses on globalization, religions, and secularization. He is also professor emeritus at Georgetown University, where he previously taught in the Department of Sociology and the Department of Theology and Religious Studies. During 2017 he was the Kluge Chair in Countries and Cultures of the North at the U.S. Library of Congress' John W. Kluge Center, where he worked on a book manuscript on Early Modern Globalization through a Jesuit Prism. He has published works on a broad range of subjects, including religion and globalization, migration and religious pluralism, transnational religions, and sociological theory. His best-known work, Public Religions in the Modern World (University of Chicago Press, 1994), has become a modern classic in the field and has been translated into several languages, including Japanese, Arabic, and Turkish. In 2012, Casanova was awarded the Theology Prize from the Salzburger Hochschulwochen in recognition of his life-long achievement in the field of theology. Casanova is a member of the Working Group on Displaced Persons and Hospitality to the Stranger, part of the Culture of Encounter Project.

Jocelyne Cesari holds the Chair of Religion and Politics and is director of research at the Edward Cadbury Centre for the Public Understanding of Religion at the University of Birmingham, United Kingdom; at Georgetown University she is a senior fellow at the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs and an associate professor of the practice of religion, peace, and conflict resolution in the Department of Government. She is the T. J. Dermot Dunphy Visiting Professor of Religion, Violence, and Peacebuilding at Harvard Divinity School. Former president of the European Academy of Religion, her work on religion, political violence, and conflict resolution has garnered recognition and awards from numerous international organizations such as the Carnegie Council for Ethics and International Affairs and the Royal Society for Arts in the United Kingdom. She is a Professorial Fellow at Australian Catholic University's Institute for Religion, Politics and Society. She teaches on contemporary Islam and politics at Harvard Divinity School and directs the Islam in the West program. Cesari is a member of the Working Group on Displaced Persons and Hospitality to the Stranger, part of the Culture of Encounter Project.

Ted G. Jelen is a professor in the political science department at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and has been a visiting professor at DePauw University and Ipek University. His principal academic focus has been on religion and politics, public opinion, church-state relations, and the politics of abortion. Jelen has also made speaking tours for the US Department of State in Pakistan, India, and Argentina. He has published 14 scholarly books and over 100 articles and chapters in academic outlets. He is a former editor of the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion and was a founding co-editor of Politics and Religion. Jelen received his B.A. from Knox College and his M.A. and Ph.D. from Ohio State.

Sohaira Siddiqui is an assistant professor of theology at Georgetown University in Qatar. Her research interests include classical Islamic legal theory (usul ul-fiqh) and political thought, the development and intersection of legal thought and political thought from the ninth to eleventh centuries, and secularism and modernity in relation to Islamic law and Muslims in the West. Siddiqui also taught a class supported through the Berkley Center's Doyle Seminars project. She is currently working on a book and several shorter projects focusing on the legal and political thought of the eleventh century jurist and theologian Abu Maʿali ai-Juwayni. She is also working on a translation of one of his shorter legal treatises and editing Locating the Shari'a: Legal Fluidity in Theory, History and Practice (forthcoming). She has previously taught Islam, Islamic law, gender and the modern Muslim world at the University of Saskatchewan, Canada. She received her doctorate in religious studies from the University of California Santa Barbara.