Edward Aspinall is a senior fellow in the Department of Political and Social Change and the School of International, Political, and Strategic Studies at the Australian National University. Prior to assuming his current position, he was a lecturer in Southeast Asian studies at the University of Sydney and a lecturer in Indonesian studies at the University of New South Wales. He is the coordinating editor of the journal Inside Indonesia. In 2010, Aspinall was awarded the Asian Studies Association of Australia’s Mid-Career Researcher Prize for Excellence in Asian Studies for his book Islam and Nation: Separatist Rebellion in Aceh (2009). His other publications include Opposing Suharto: Compromise, Resistance, and Regime Change in Indonesia (2005) and Problems of Democratisation in Indonesia: Elections, Institutions, and Society (coedited with Marcus Mietzner, 2010).
John R. Bowen is the Dunbar–Van Cleve Professor in Arts and Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis. Bowen won the Herbert Jacobs Prize from the Law Society Association for his book Islam, Law, and Equality in Indonesia: An Anthropology of Public Reasoning (2003). His other noted publications are Can Islam Be French? Pluralism and Pragmatism in a Secularist State (2009) and Why the French Don’t Like Headscarves: Islam, the State, and Public Space (2008). He is former president of the Association for Political and Legal Anthropology (2004–2007) and associate editor of American Anthropologist. In 2010, he received a National Science Foundation research grant for the article “Shariah Without Courts: A Study of Islamic Judicial Practices in England.”
Simon Butt is a current ARC Australian Postdoctoral Research Fellow and Associate Director (Indonesia) for the Centre for Asian and Pacific Law at The University of Sydney where he teaches Indonesian law. He has written widely on aspects of Indonesian law, including two recent books: Corruption and Law in Indonesia (2012) and The Constitution of Indonesia: A Contextual Analysis with Tim Lindsey (2012).
Sidney Jones is a senior adviser to the Asia Program of the International Crisis Group (ICG) and the primary author of all ICG reports on Southeast Asia. Jones has examined the separatist conflicts of Aceh, Papua, and Mindanao; the communal conflicts of Poso and Maluccas; and the ethnic conflict of Kalimantan. Her analyses have been included in the New York Times, the Financial Times, the Jakarta Post, and The Australian as well as on CNN, BBC, ABC, NBC, and NHK. Before joining the ICG in 2002, Jones worked for the Ford Foundation in Jakarta and New York (1977–1984); Amnesty International in London as the Indonesia–Philippines researcher (1985–1988); and Human Rights Watch in New York as the Asia director (1989–2001). She holds a B.A. and an M.A. from the University of Pennsylvania and conducted doctoral research in Kediri, East Java, on Nahdlatul Ulama. She lived in Shiraz, Iran, for one year as a university student (1971–1972) and studied Arabic in Cairo and Tunisia. Jones received an honorary doctorate in 2006 from the New School in New York.
Mirjam Künkler is an assistant professor in the Department for Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University. She received her Ph.D. in political science from Columbia University. Künkler is currently working on a book that analyzes the impact of contemporary Islamic thought and social movement activism on the transformation of authoritarian rule in Iran (1989–2005) and Indonesia (1974–1998). Apart from contributions to political science journals and edited volumes, Künkler’s work appears in the recent book Zur Rolle von Religion in Demokratisierungspro-zessen (On the Role of Religious Actors in Democratization Processes), which she coedited with Julia Leininger (2009). Mirjam Künkler is coprincipal investigator of Princeton’s Luce Grant on Religion and International Affairs, coprincipal investigator on a British Academy Grant on Female Religious Authority in Islam, and lead principal investigator on the Social Science Research Council–sponsored Iran Social Science Data Portal.
R. William Liddle is a professor of political science at the Ohio State University. He served as the chair of the Indonesia Committee and Southeast Asia Council of the Association for Asian Studies and has been named Distinguished Visiting Lecturer by the National Democratic Institute. His recent publications include Leadership and Culture in Indonesian Politics (1996), “Indonesia’s Approaching Elections: Politics, Islam, and Public Opinion,” in Asian Survey (January 2004); “Leadership, Party, and Religion: Explaining Voting Behavior in Indonesia,” coauthored with Saiful Mujani, in Comparative Political Studies (2007); and “Personalities, Parties, and Voters,” also coauthored with Saiful Mujani, in Journal of Democracy (April 2010).
Tim Lindsey is Malcolm Smith Professor of Asian Law and Director of the Centre for Indonesian Law, Islam, and Society in the Law School at the University of Melbourne. He is also a founding editor of the Australian Journal of Asian Law and a former Australian Research Council Federation Fellow. His publications include a three-volume series Islam, Law and the State in Southeast Asia (2012), as well as The Constitution of Indonesia: A Contextual Analysis with Simon Butt (2012) and Indonesia: Law and Society (2nd ed., 2008).
Franz Magnis-Suseno SJ, a Jesuit priest, is professor at the Driyarkara School of Philosophy and at Universitas Indonesia in Jakarta. Born in 1936 in Germany, Magnis-Suseno has lived in Indonesia since 1961 and has long been an Indonesian citizen. He studied philosophy, theology, and political science in Pullach, Yogyakarta, and München Munich and got a doctorate in philosophy from the University of München Munich. He has extensively published in the fields of ethics, political philosophy, and Javanese spirituality, including Javanese Ethics and World-View: The Javanese Idea of the Good Life (1997).
Marcus Mietzner is a lecturer in the School of Culture, History, and Language at the Australian National University. His research focuses on the political role of the military in Indonesia, political campaign financing issues, and comparative electoral politics in Southeast Asia. Noted publications include his 2009 book Military Politics, Islam, and the State in Indonesia: From Turbulent Transition to Democratic Consolidation, the 2009 article “Indonesia: Democratic Consolidation in Soeharto’s Shadow” in Southeast Asian Affairs(2009), and the 2010 collected volume Problems of Democratisation in Indonesia: Elections, Institutions, and Society (coedited with Edward Aspinall, 2010).
Saiful Mujani is Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at the Universitas Islam Negeri Syarif Hidayatullah, Jakarta, and founder of the Lembaga Survei Indonesia (Indonesian Survey Institute). His published works include Kuasa Rakyat (People Power) (2012) with R. William Liddle and Kuskridha Ambardi; Muslim Demokrat (Democratic Muslims) (2007); and articles in Comparative Political Studies, American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Democracy, and Asian Survey. He also serves as a member of the Advisory Board of the Varieties of Democracy Project (V-Dem) at the Kellogg Institute, Notre Dame University.
Alfred Stepan is the Wallace Sayre Professor of Government; director of the Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration, and Religion; and codirector of the Institute for Religion, Culture, and Public Life at Columbia University. He is the author of Arguing Comparative Politics (2001) as well as the coauthor of Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation: Southern Europe, South America, and Post-Communist Europe (with Juan J. Linz, 1996) and Crafting State Nations: India and Other Multinational Democracies (with Juan J. Linz and Yogendra Yadav, 2011). He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a fellow of the British Academy.