Berkley Center

Peter Mandaville is a professor of international affairs at the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University, where he also serves as the director of the AbuSulayman Center for Global Islamic Studies. He was a Berkley Center senior research fellow from April 2018 to April 2024 and from 2022 to 2024 served as a senior advisor on religion and inclusive societies at the United States Institute of Peace. Previous government experience includes serving as a member of the U.S. State Department’s Policy Planning Staff (2011-2012) and as a senior advisor in the department’s Office of Religion and Global Affairs (2015-2016). He has also been a visiting senior fellow at the Pew Research Center. His research focuses on the intersection of religion and international affairs, with a primary focus on Islam and the Muslim world. His publications include, among others, The Geopolitics of Religious Soft Power: How States Use Religion in Foreign Policy (2023),  Wahhabism and the World (2022), Islam and Politics (2014, 2020), Global Political Islam (2007), and Transnational Muslim Politics: Reimagining the Umma (2001). He holds degrees from the University of St. Andrews and the University of Kent and has studied at the American University in Cairo.

Annelle R. Sheline is a research fellow for the Middle East at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and a non-resident fellow at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy. Her research focuses on religious authority in the Middle East, examining the intersection of religious and national identities in the Arab monarchies, and emphasizes implications for combating violent extremism.

Alexander Thurston is assistant professor of political science at the University of Cincinnati. He is the author of Salafism in Nigeria: Islam, Preaching and Politics (2016), Boko Haram: The History of an African Jihadist Movement (2018), and Jihadists of North Africa and the Sahel: Local Politics and Rebel Groups (2020). He has held fellowships with the Council on Foreign Relations, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and the American Council of Learned Societies.