AHMED ABDEL MEGUID is an assistant professor at the Department of Religion, Syracuse University. He earned his BA at the American University in Cairo and his MA and Ph.D. in philosophy at Emory University. His research draws on Islamic and German philosophy, focusing on metaphysics, epistemology, and social and political philosophy. He has published and has forthcoming articles in the European Journal of Political Theory, Oxford Journal of Islamic Studies, and Philological Encounters. He is presently finalizing a monograph on the philosophical anthropology of Ibn al-‘Arabi, provisionally titled Symbolic Meaning and Imagination: Ibn al-‘Arabi and the Synthesis of Islamic Theories of the Self, and is also working on a manuscript on modal logic in classical and early to late modern Sunni theology and philosophy, provisionally titled Modality and the Problem of Skepticism versus Foundationalism in Sunni Epistemology.
KHALED ABOU EL FADL is the Omar and Azmeralda Alfi Distinguished Professor in Islamic Law at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) School of Law. He holds a BA in political science from Yale University, a JD from the University of Pennsylvania Law School, and an MA and Ph.D. in Islamic law from Princeton University. He is the author of fourteen books including Rebellion and Violence in Islamic Law (Cambridge University Press, 2001), Speaking in God’s Name: Islamic Law, Authority and Women (Oneworld Press, 2001), and, most recently, his magnum opus Reasoning with God: Reclaiming Shari’ah in the Modern Age (Rowman & Littlefield, 2014).
SAHAR AZIZ is an associate professor at Texas A&M University School of Law and a nonresident fellow at the Brookings Doha Center. Professor Aziz’s scholarship lies at the intersection of national security and civil rights law with a focus on how post-9/11 laws and policies adversely impact racial, ethnic, and religious minorities. She is also an expert on the Middle East wherein she focuses on the relationship between authoritarianism and rule of law in Egypt. Professor Aziz has been featured on CNN, CSPAN, Fox News, Russia Today, and Al Jazeera America, and she has published commentaries on CNN.com, The New York Times, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the Middle East Institute, the World Politics Review, the Houston Chronicle, The Guardian, the Christian Science Monitor, and Huffington Post.
EMRAN EL-BADAWI is program director and associate professor of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Houston. He is also the founding executive director and treasurer of the International Qur’anic Studies Association. Dr. El-Badawi has published articles in English as well as Arabic. His book on The Qur’an and the Aramaic Gospel Traditions (Routledge, 2013) was a finalist for the British-Kuwait Friendship Society Book Prize. He is currently co-authoring a textbook on A History of the Classical Middle East (Cognella, forthcoming), and his future projects will research liberalism in the Arab world as well as the contribution of eastern church laws to the Shari‘ah. Dr. El-Badawi received his Ph.D. in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations from the University of Chicago.
MOHAMAD ELMASRY is an associate professor in the Media and Cultural Studies Program at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies and an assistant professor in the Department of Communications at the university of North Alabama. In 2009, Dr. Elmasry received his Ph.D. in mass communication from the University of Iowa, where he was a presidential fellow. His Ph.D. dissertation examined constraints on news production in Egypt. Dr. Elmasry held assistant professorships at Qatar University from 2009 to 2011, and at the American University in Cairo from 2011 to 2014. His research on Arab press systems, the sociology of news, and news and race has appeared in refereed scholarly publications, including the International Communication Gazette, the International Journal of Communication, Journalism Practice, the Journal of Middle East Media, the Journal of Arab and Muslim Media Research, and the Global Media Journal. Dr. Elmasry is also a political and media analyst, specializing in Egypt. He writes regularly for Al Jazeera English and the Middle East Eye, and has also written for Muftah, Religion Dispatches, Open Democracy, PULSE, The Immanent Frame, Jadaliyya, and Egypt Independent. He has appeared regularly on local and international television, radio, and internet news networks, including CNN International, BBC World News, BBC World Service Radio, Al Jazeera English, Al Jazeera America, Al Jazeera Live Egypt, Huff Post Live, NTV (Turkey), ARD (German Public Television & Radio), A9 Television Istanbul, SVT (Swedish TV News), and ABC News Australia Radio, among other networks.
DALIA F. FAHMY is an assistant professor of political science at Long Island University and a senior fellow at the Center for Global Policy. She has published several articles in academic journals focusing on democratization and most recently on the effects of Islamophobia on US foreign policy. Dr. Fahmy’s forthcoming book explores the rise and fall of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. She is also co-editor of International Relations (Kendall Hunt, 2017). Her current research examines the intellectual and political development of modern Islamist movements. She has been interviewed by and published in various media outlets including ABC, CNBC, MSNBC, CNN, the Huffington Post, Al Jazeera, and The New Middle East.
DAANISH FARUQI is a doctoral candidate in history at Duke University. His work deals with Islamic political thought, and currently focuses on the nexus between Sufi mysticism and political activism. Additionally, he has worked extensively on modern Arab intellectual history, and on reformist Islamic thought through the prism of objectives-based legal theory (maqasid al-shari‘ah). A former Fulbright scholar, he has spent several years in the Arab Middle East as a researcher and journalist. In addition to his scholarly work, he regularly writes for the global press, having published in Al Jazeera, Common Dreams, and Religion Dispatches, among other media outlets.
JOEL GORDON is professor of history, former director of the King Fahd Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Arkansas, and a research affiliate of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Denver. He is the author of three books – Nasser’s Blessed Movement: Egypt’s Free Officers and the July Revolution (Oxford University Press, 1992), Revolutionary Melodrama: Popular Film and Civic Identity in Nasser’s Egypt (Middle East Documentation Center, 2002), and Nasser: Hero of the Arab Nation (Oneworld, 2006) – as well as numerous articles on Egyptian political and cultural history, particularly film, television, and popular music.
AMR HAMZAWY studied political science and developmental studies in Cairo, The Hague, and Berlin. After finishing his doctoral studies and after five years of teaching in Cairo and Berlin, Dr. Hamzawy joined the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (Washington, DC) between 2005 and 2009 as a senior associate for Middle East Politics. Between 2009 and 2010, he served as the research director of the Middle East Center of the Carnegie Endowment in Beirut, Lebanon. In 2011, he joined the Department of Public Policy and Administration at the American University in Cairo, where he continues to serve today. Dr. Hamzawy also serves as an associate professor of political science at the Department of Political Science, Cairo University. Most recently he is a visiting scholar at Stanford University’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL).
His research and teaching interests as well as his academic publications focus on democratization processes in Egypt, tensions between freedom and repression in the Egyptian public space, political movements and civil society in Egypt, contemporary debates in Arab political thought, and human rights and governance in the Arab world.
Dr. Hamzawy is a former member of the People’s Assembly after being elected in the first parliamentary elections in Egypt after the January 25, 2011 revolution. He is also a former member of the Egyptian National Council for Human Rights. Dr. Hamzawy contributes a daily column and a weekly op-ed to the Egyptian independent newspaper Shorouk and a weekly op-ed to the Arab newspaper Al-Quds al-Arabi.
ANN M. LESCH is emeritus professor of political science at The American University in Cairo, where she was dean of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences and associate provost for international studies. She previously taught at Villanova University, worked in New York and Cairo for the Ford Foundation, and represented the American Friends Service Committee in Jerusalem. She was president of the Middle East Studies Association and of the Sudan Studies Association and director of the Palestinian American Research Center. Dr. Lesch has published numerous books and articles on Palestinian and Sudanese politics as well as on Egypt. Her latest articles include “Parliament without Politics: The Effort to Consolidate Authoritarian Rule,” The Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI), 2016; “Egypt: Resurgence of the Security State” (FPRI), 2014; “The Fluctuating Roles of the Military in Egypt,” Journal of South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, 2015; and “Egypt’s Spring: Causes of the Revolution,” Middle East Policy, 2011.
ABDEL-FATTAH MADY is an associate professor of political science at Egypt’s Alexandria University. He joined the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars as a visiting scholar from September 2015 to May 2016. He also served as a visiting scholar at University of Denver, spring 2015. In 2004, he was a recipient of the John Randolph Haynes and Dora Haynes Fellowship for social research. He received his BA and MA in politics at Alexandria University, Egypt, with a further MA and Ph.D. from Claremont Graduate University, USA. His research focuses on regime transitions and democratization, Islamic political movements, civil education and human rights in the Arab region, and the Arab-Israeli conflict. He is the author and editor of several books, including On Reform and Revolution in Egypt (2015), Towards a Historical Democratic Front in the Arab Countries (Beirut, 2010), Arab Regime Transitions (Beirut, 2009), The Concept of Democratic Elections and Arab Elections (2010), and Religion and Politics in Israel (1999), as well as numerous articles appearing in Democratization, the Arab Journal of Political Science, Contemporary Arab Affairs, the Arab Future, Arab Politics, among other publications. He is currently involved in projects in Egypt, USA and Switzerland. He can be reached at: www.abdelfattahmady.net / Abdelfattah.Mady@gmail.com
HESHAM SALLAM is a research associate at Stanford University’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL), and serves as the Center’s associate-director of the Program on Arab Reform and Democracy. He is also a co-editor of Jadaliyya ezine. His research focuses on Islamist movements and the politics of economic reform in the Arab world. Dr. Sallam received a Ph.D. in government and an MA in Arab studies from Georgetown University.
EMAD EL-DIN SHAHIN is the Hasib Sabbagh Distinguished Visiting Chair of Arabic and Islamic Studies and a visiting professor of political science at the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. He is also a tenured professor of public policy at the American University in Cairo (on leave). Shahin holds a Ph.D. from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and an MA and BA from the American University in Cairo. He has taught in leading universities including Harvard, Notre Dame, George Washington, and Boston University. Shahin was a Distinguished Visiting Scholar at Columbia University and public policy scholar at The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. His research and teaching interests focus on comparative politics, democracy and political reform in Muslim societies, Islam and politics, and political economy of the Middle East. He has authored, co-authored, and co-edited six books, and has more than fifty scholarly publications including journal articles, book chapters, and encyclopedia entries. His publications include Political Ascent: Contemporary Islamic Movements in North Africa; co-editorship with Nathan Brown of The Struggle over Democracy in the Middle East and North Africa; and co-authorship of Islam and Democracy (in Arabic). He is the editor-in-chief of The Oxford Encyclopedia of Islam and Politics and co-editor with John L. Esposito of The Oxford Handbook of Islam and Politics.