Valeria Bello
Associate Professor in Sociology at the Blanquerna Faculty of Communications and International Relations, University Ramón Llull, Barcelona, Spain.

Previously she has been Senior Research Fellow at the United Nations University Institute on Globalization, Culture and Mobility (UNU-GCM) and is the founding scientific coordinator of the UNU Migration Network, which she has coordinated from February 2014 until January 2016. She mainly works on themes such as prejudice, racism, extremism and the securitization of migration. Her research interests concern the role of non-state actors in the area of migration and interethnic relations and in the fields of international relations and international and human security. She is also an expert of migration and climate change and its impact on socio-political and cultural conflicts. She has also worked as assistant coordinator of the Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence of the University of Trento (2003-2009) and assistant professor at the University of Trento (Italy) from 2005 to 2009.Her recent publications include "Places of Welcome. How to turn difficulties into opportunities? Best practices in the inclusion of migrants", Policy Brief, 2018,UNU-GCM; "Interculturalism as a New Framework to reduce Prejudice in Times of Crisis in European Countries", International Migration,52(1), 2017, 23-28; "Migraciones y Seguridad Humana. Un Nuevo Modelo Migratorio", inAnna Terron (ed.), Sociedades Seguras, Madrid:CESEDEM, Spanish Ministry of Defense, 2017.

Katerina Dalacoura
Associate Professor in International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Katerina Dalacoura has been awarded a Major Research Fellowship by the Leverhulme Trust  for three years starting September 2021. Her project, entitled "The International Thought of Turkish Islamists: History, Civilisation and Nation" will be a work of intellectual history that engages with the concept of a ‘global IR’. In 2015-16, she was British Academy Mid-Career Fellow and in 2016-19 she participated in a project on the ‘Middle East and North Africa Regional Architecture’, sponsored by the European Commission under the auspices of Horizon 2020 (2016-19). She previously worked at the University of Essex and at the International Institute of Strategic Studies. Dr Dalacoura’s work has centered on the intersection of Islamism and international human rights norms. She has worked on human rights, democracy and democracy promotion, in the Middle East, particularly in the context of Western policies in the region. Her latest research focuses on the role of culture and civilization in International Relations with special reference to Turkey. She has a continuing interest in questions of secularity and secularization in the Middle East.

Deniz Kandiyoti
Emeritus Professor of Development Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.

She holds degrees from the University of Paris (Sorbonne) and the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). She was also on the faculty of the Middle East Technical University (1969-74) and Boğaziçi University (1974-1980) in Turkey. She has worked on Turkey, post-Soviet Central Asia and Afghanistan and developed comparative perspectives on state, gender and power in the broader Muslim world. She made key theoretical contributions to analyses of patriarchy and male dominance. She is the author of Concubines, Sisters and Citizens: Identities and Social Transformation (in Turkish, 1997) the editor of  Fragments of Culture: The Everyday of Modern Turkey (2002), Gendering the Middle East (1996) , Women, Islam and the State (1991) Gender, Governance and Islam (with Nadje Al-Ali and Kathryn Spellman Poots,  2019) and numerous articles on gender, women’s rights, Islam, development and state policies. She has also acted as consultant for UNWomen, UNDP, UNESCO, OSCE, UNIFEM, British Council, DFID and UNRISD and monitored the gender effects of the Arab uprisings from 2011 as guest editor for 50.50  open Democracy.

Michelle Pace
Professor in Global Studies at Roskilde University (RUC). She is also Associate Fellow at Chatham House, Europe Program.

Michelle serves as Associate non-resident Member at the Middle East Studies Forum, Deakin University; Member of the Management Committee of COST ACTION CA20107 (Connecting Theory and Practical Issues of Migration and Religious Diversity), as well as of the Scientific Advisory Board at the Centre for Advanced Middle Eastern Studies, Lund University and of the editorial board of the journal Mediterranean Politics. She has been Principal Investigator (PI) on a Carlsberg Foundation funded project on “The Struggle of State-Building in Palestine: Exploring “State-less”-Society  Relations in the West Bank” (2016-2018) and also a PI on a large FACE/DAPP/Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Denmark funded project entitled “Change in exile: Re-invigorating principles of reform and social stability amongst young Syrian refugees in Denmark and Lebanon” (2016-2017). Michelle was the Danish Lead partner on the EU H2020 SIRIUS project on skills and integration of migrants, refugees and asylum applicants in European labour markets (2018-2021). She was also Co-PI on a Wellcome Trust project on Gaza: The spatio-politics of health, death and life (with Haim Yacobi). From 1 February 2022 – 31 January 2023 she is a Carlsberg Foundation Monograph Fellow. Her research areas of interest include: migration studies, emotions in IR, democratization and de-democratization in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and decolonization. Her recent publications include The Routledge Handbook of EU-Middle East Relations (2022) co-edited with Dimitris Bouris and Daniela Huber; ” Settler Colonialism (Without Settlers) and Slow Violence in the Gaza Strip” (with Haim Yacobi) published in the journal Partecipazione e Conflitto, 2021, 14 (3), 1221-1237; “Imperial Pasts in the EU’s Approach to the Mediterranean” (with Roberto Roccu) published in the journal Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies, 2020, 22 (6),  671-685; “Overcoming bordering practices through the arts: The case of young Syrian refugees and their Danish counterparts in Denmark” published in Geopolitics, 2018, 23 (4), 781-802.

Yezid Sayigh
Senior fellow at the Malcolm H. Kerr Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, where he leads the program on Civil-Military Relations in Arab States (CMRAS).

His work focuses on the comparative political and economic roles of Arab armed forces and nonstate actors, the impact of war on states and societies, and the politics of postconflict reconstruction and security sector transformation in Arab transitions, and authoritarian resurgence. Previously, Sayigh held teaching and research positions at King’s College London, the University of Cambridge, and the University of Oxford, as well as visiting positions or fellowships at Harvard University, Brandeis University, the American University of Beirut, and the School of Oriental and African Studies. From 1998–2003, he also headed the Middle East program of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. Sayigh was also an adviser and negotiator in the Palestinian delegation to the peace talks with Israel and headed the Palestinian delegation to the multilateral peace talks on Arms Control and Regional Security from 1991–1994. From 1999, he provided policy and technical consultancy on the permanent-status peace talks and on Palestinian reform.