Berkley Center

Judd Birdsall is assistant professor of the practice in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at Georgetown University, where he is also a senior fellow at the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs and the project director of the Transatlantic Policy Network on Religion and Diplomacy (TPNRD). In addition, he is a senior advisor on the religion and inclusive societies team at the United States Institute of Peace. From 2011 to 2020 Birdsall was based at Cambridge University, where he earned his Ph.D., founded a research center on religion and international studies, and served as an affiliated lecturer in the Department of Politics and International Studies. Prior to his time at Cambridge, he served in the U.S. State Department’s Office of International Religious Freedom and on the Secretary of State’s Policy Planning Staff. Birdsall is the editor of Religion & Diplomacy, and his work has appeared in the Washington Post, Foreign Policy, Guardian, Huffington Post, Christianity Today, and Religion & Politics. He is also a senior editor and a frequent contributor at the Review of Faith & International Affairs.

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.

Grace Davie is professor emerita of sociology at the University of Exeter. In addition to numerous chapters and articles, she is the author of Religion in Britain since 1945 (1994), Religion in Modern Europe (2000), Europe: The Exceptional Case (2002), and The Sociology of Religion (2007); she is co-author of Religious America, Secular Europe (2008), and Welfare and Religion in 21st Century Europe, Volumes One and Two (2010/2011). Grace Davie is also co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Europe (2021)

Lucian Leustean is reader in politics and international relations at Aston University, Birmingham, United Kingdom, where he has been teaching since 2007. He is a senior fellow of the Orthodoxy and Human Rights Scholars Project at Fordham University. His recent publications include, as co-editor with Grace Davie, The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Europe (2021), and as editor, Forced Migration and Human Security in the Eastern Orthodox World (2019) and Eastern Christianity and Politics in the Twenty-First Century (2014).