Berkley Center

A former Danish diplomat, Merete Bilde is a policy advisor at the European External Action Service of the European Union in Brussels. In the aftermath of the Arab Spring, her work has focused heavily on the new political actors and the new regional dynamics at play, including between the new Middle East and the United States and Europe.

Christian Heldt is a German career diplomat who has served as deputy head of mission of the German Embassy to the Holy See in Rome since 2013. From 2010 to 2013, he headed the France, Belgium, Netherlands, and Luxemburg divisions in the Directorate General for Europe in the Auswärtiges Amt. Heldt served in the German Defense Ministry as senior political adviser to the chief of staff responsible for German military missions abroad (Afghanistan, Atalanta/Somalia, Balkans) from 2008 to 2010. Prior to these roles, he served in the French Quai d’Orsay as counselor and deputy secretary general for Franco-German relations, and he led the German negotiations to the Mediterranean Union as acting head of the Barcelona Process division in the Auswärtiges Amt. Heldt received M.A. degrees from the universities of Bonn and Paris-Sorbonne, where he studied contemporary history, international public law, and political sciences.

Jean-Christophe Peaucelle has served as advisor for religious affairs at the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ central administration since 2014. He joined the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1987 and has since held a variety of positions, including deputy director of North Africa and the Middle East, head of mission to the director of French citizens abroad and foreigners in France, deputy consul general in Jerusalem and Istanbul, and deputy director of economic and financial affairs. He has also served as deputy director of communications strategy and evaluation at the Directorate General of International Cooperation and of Development and as ambassador to Qatar. Peaucelle holds degrees from the National School for Statistics and Economic Administration, the Institute of Political Studies in Paris, and the University of Paris; he is a Knight of the National Order of Merit (Ordre national du Mérite).

Timothy Samuel Shah is a distinguished research scholar in the Politics Department at the University of Dallas, as well as as a senior fellow at the Archbridge Institute and the principal investigator for the Freedom of Religious Institutions in Society (FORIS) project at the Religious Freedom Institute. Previously a research professor of government at Baylor University’s Institute for Studies of Religion, he also served as associate director of the Berkley Center's Religious Freedom Project, director for international research of the center's Religious Freedom Research Project, and associate professor of the practice of religion and global politics in Georgetown University's Government Department. He is a political scientist specializing in religious freedom as well as in the broad relationship between religious and political dynamics in theory, history, and contemporary practice. He is author of God’s Century: Resurgent Religion and Global Politics (2011, with Monica Duffy Toft and Daniel Philpott) and editor of Under Caesar's Sword: How Christians Respond to Persecution (2018, with Daniel Philpott) and Homo Religiosus? Exploring the Roots of Religion and Religious Freedom in Human Experience (2018, with Jack Friedman). Shah received his A.B., magna cum laude, in 1992 and a Ph.D. in 2002, both from Harvard University.