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; she is a senior fellow at the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs at Georgetown University, where she previously was 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.

Ziba Mir-Hosseini is a professorial research associate at the University of London's Centre of Islamic and Middle Eastern Law, as well as an associate member of the Centre for Iranian Studies. A legal anthropologist, her work focuses on Islamic law, gender, and development. Her publications include: Men in Charge? Rethinking Authority in Muslim Legal Tradition, edited with Mulki Al-Sharmani and Jana Rumminger (Oneworld, 2015); Control and Sexuality: The Revival of Zina Laws in Muslim Contexts (2010, with Vanja Hamzic); Islam and Democracy in Iran: Eshkevari and the Quest for Reform (2006, with Richard Tapper); Marriage on Trial: A Study of Islamic Family Law in Iran and Morocco (1993/2002); and Islam and Gender: The Religious Debate in Contemporary Iran (1999). She is also co-editor of Gender and Equality in Muslim Family Law: Justice and Ethics in the Islamic Legal Process (2013). Mir-Hosseini is a founding member of Musawah Global Movement for Equality and Justice in the Muslim Family. She holds a B.A. from Tehran University and a Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge.

Yüksel Sezgin is an assistant professor of political science at Maxwell School of Public Affairs at Syracuse University. He previously taught at the University of Washington, Harvard Divinity School, and the City University of New York, and he has held research positions at Princeton University, Columbia University, University of Bielefeld, American University in Cairo, and the University of Delhi. Yüksel is the author of Human Rights under State-Enforced Religious Family Laws in Israel, Egypt and India (2013), which was awarded the 2014 Gordon Hirabayashi Human Rights Book Prize by the American Sociological Association. He received his undergraduate and graduate degrees from the University of Ankara, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, University of London (SOAS), and the University of Washington. 

Ambassador Melanne Verveer is the executive director of the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security. She most recently served as the first US Ambassador for Global Women’s Issues. In this position, she coordinated foreign policy issues and activities relating to the political, economic and social advancement of women, traveling to nearly sixty countries. She worked to ensure that women’s participation and rights are fully integrated into US foreign policy, and she played a leadership role in the Obama administration’s development of the US National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security. From 2000 to 2008, she was the chair and co-CEO of Vital Voices Global Partnership, an international NGO that she co-founded to invest in emerging women leaders. During the Clinton administration, she served as assistant to the president and chief of staff to first lady Hillary Clinton. She received a B.S. and M.S. from Georgetown University and holds several honorary degrees.