Reza Aslan
UC Riverside
HOW TO WIN A COSMIC WAR

Born in Iran, Reza Aslan, an internationally acclaimed writer and scholar of religions, is a fellow at the University of Southern California's Center on Public Diplomacy, Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at University of California, Riverside, and a Middle East Analyst for CBS News. He has degrees in Religion from Santa Clara University, Harvard University, and the University of California, Santa Barbara, as well as a Master's degree of Fine Arts from the University of Iowa, where he was named the Truman Capote Fellow in Fiction. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities, and the Pacific Council on International Policy. He serves on the board of directors for both the Ploughshares Fund and PEN USA. Aslan's first book is the New York Times Bestselling, No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam, which has been translated into half a dozen languages, short-listed for the Guardian (UK) First Book Award, and was nominated for a PEN USA award for research non-fiction. His next book, How to Win a Cosmic War will be published by Random House in the Fall 2008, followed by an edited anthology, Words Without Borders: Contemporary Literature from the Muslim World, which will be published by Norton in the Spring of 2009. Aslan is Co-Founder and Creative Director of BoomGen Studios and the Editorial Executive of Mecca.com, an on-line community for Muslim youth.

Roland Benedikter
European Foundation Fellow

Roland Benedikter, Dott. Dr. Dr. Dr., born 1965, is European Foundation Fellow 2009-13, in residence at the Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies as a Visiting Scholar with duties as the Foundation's Research Professor of Political Sociology, and Visiting Scholar 2009-10 at the Forum on Contemporary Europe of Stanford University. He is co-author of Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker's "Report to the Club of Rome" 2003 (all three versions: English, German and Chinese), has edited and co-authored 14 books, published more than 100 essays in specialized international journals, and is author and editor of the book series "Transdisciplinary Studies on Contemporary Societies" (since 2005). Roland is currently working on two books: One about the "Global Systemic Shift. The 'three endings' of our epoch and their perspectives" and a book about the "Cultural Psychology of 'the West'. Paradigms and Politics in the USA and Europe at the start of the era Barack Obama". Through both projects he also engages in European policy advice. Roland's previous teaching and research engagements include Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, Turkey, Bulgaria, the US, the UK, Australia, and Peru.

Katsuhiro Kohara
Professor of Systematic Theology
Doshisha University, Kyoto, Japan

Professor of Systematic Theology, Doshisha University, Kyoto, Japan, Dr. Kohara is also an ordained pastor (United Church of Christ, Japan). He is deputy director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Study of Monotheistic Religions at Doshisha University and is secretary general of the Kyoto Graduate Union of Religious Studies. 

Dr. Kohara’s current project is entitled “Comparative Study of Religious Policies in the Post-secular Age: Focusing on Religious Freedom and the Separation between Religion and Politics in Global Society.” The purpose of this research is to examine changes in modern society, which cannot be described simply by means of the dichotomous concepts of “secular” versus “religious,” in terms of the idea of “post-secularism.” It will develop a theoretical framework for such changes, while analyzing some specific cases as well as the policy measures taken to address these cases. In this process, special attention will be paid to “religious freedom” and “the separation of religion and politics” as indices that characterize various national policy measures taken by different countries. However, the concepts of both religious freedom and the separation of religion and politics have their ideological roots in the modern West. Accordingly, how such concepts are accepted or rejected in the non-Western world will be carefully considered. Specifically, the research will try to shed light on the importance of post-secularism research for the non-Western society by examining the situations of China and Iran, which have often reacted against the concepts of Western-style (or more specifically, American-style) religious freedom and the separation of religion and politics.

Salvador J. Murguia
California State University, San Bernardino
GLOBALIZATION AND POSTMODERN RELIGION

Salvador Murguia is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at Cal State San Bernardino, where he teaches courses in sociology of religion, social theory, deviant behavior, and research methods. His areas of academic interest include religion, social theory, deviance, social psychology, globalization, culture, ethnography, and criminology. Murguia has also been an instructor at UCSB, where he received his Ph.D. in Sociology in 2006. He will be working on a book on postmodern religion in an era of globalization.

Anne-Marie Oliver
Institute for International Studies, Harvard University
PROSPECTS FOR PEACE IN THE MIDDLE EAST

Anne-Marie Oliver is a research scholar on the Middle East who has been for many years a Research Affiliate at the Institute for International Studies at Harvard University, but now has relocated to the West Coast.  She has lectured at institutions across the United States, including Yale, Princeton, The University of Chicago, Columbia, Stanford, UCLA, The San Francisco Psychoanalytic Institute, The Annenberg School for Communication at USC, and The Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs.  Her co-authored book, The Road to Martyrs’ Square, was published by Oxford University Press in January 2005, and is a Quill Award nominee.  She has appeared on dozens of radio and television shows in the U.S. and abroad (including CNN, C-SPAN, National Public Radio, the BBC, MSNBC, Air America, Hannity & Colmes, and Fresh Air with Terry Gross) as well as in print media, including The Guardian, The Times, and The Independent. Oliver has just returned from a research visit to the Palestinian West Bank, will be working on new political alliances and the prospects for peace in Israel and Palestine. She has recently published reports of her interviews in Slate and The New Republic.

Sophie Cheetham
University of Leeds, UK
INTERNATIONAL NGO RESPONSE TO HIV/AIDS IN SOUTH AFRICA

Sophie Cheetham works on the social and economic impact of HIV/AIDS on children and young adults in South Africa. She graduated from the University of Leeds, England, in July 2006, in the field of International Development. She has completed field research in South Africa on an HIV/AIDS education and is now working with an assistance program in the Cape winelands district. The programme will provide care and assistance for those who are living with HIV/AIDS in the rural and urban areas of Cape Town, specifically children and young adults. While with the Orfalea Center, Sophie plans to complete the written report on the South African HIV/AIDS assistance project.

Steve Eskow
Pangaea Network (Africa), and Engineers Without Borders
ENGINEERING AND DISTANCE LEARNING – OPPORTUNITIES IN AFRICA

Steve Eskow is president of both Pangaea Network and Electronic University Network. He earned a Bachelor of Arts at the University of California at Berkeley, a Master of Arts at Columbia University and a Doctor of Philosophy at Syracuse University. As a 20-year community college president, Eskow has helped bring international education opportunities and distance learning to thousands of students. As President of The Electronic University Network, he pioneered in helping other colleges and universities harness the teaching power of the Internet and World Wide Web. Eskow's success in driving new educational ventures has been the subject of numerous articles and dissertations. During his tenure as President of Rockland Community College of The State University of New York, the college grew from 135 students to become a major force in New York and a leader in nontraditional and international education. He was the founder and first president of The College Consortium of International Studies (CCIS), a federation that now has 95 college members and sends some 4000 students abroad each year to 35 countries; and he was the founding president of The International Partnership for Service Learning, a federation of colleges that sends students to serve in community service agencies in several countries. A frequent speaker at educational seminars and conventions, Eskow is a recognized leader of distance learning programs, having directed several national conferences and workshops on the virtual campus, distance learning and online training. In addition, he has written more than 50 articles, chapters and monographs on the virtual campus, corporate/college partnerships, distance learning, corporate training and international education.

Barbara Lüthi
University of Basel, Switzerland
GLOBAL MIGRATION AND INTERNATIONAL SECURITY

Barbara Lüthi received her Ph.D. in history from the University of Basel, Switzerland in 2005. Since 2002 she has been a lecturer in the History department at Basel, teaching courses in Global History, Migration and Migration Theory, and Histories/Theories of Race and Racism, among others. Since 2005, she has been academic advisor and co-editor of the catalogue for an exhibition on Swiss migration at Ellis Island Immigration Museum/USA (2006) and Swiss National Museum/Switzerland (2007).  She has published numerous articles in edited volumes and in journals including Traverse, Zeitschrift für Geschichte, of which she is an editorial board member. Dr. Lüthi’s current research focuses on visions of security and immigration in the USA and Switzerland from 1945 to the present. While with the Orfalea Center, she will be working on exemplary case studies from different decades in the USA, drawing on primary sources from archives and including material such as newspapers, motion pictures, caricatures, posters, speeches. The project aims to trace the conjunction of discourses, social and administrative practices and legislative as well as spatial effects with relation to immigration and security in the two countries. Eventually further countries of comparison (Israel, Germany, Australia) shall be considered in collaboration with other researchers.

Berthold Molden
Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for European History and Public Spheres, Vienna
University of Vienna

Berthold Molden is a contemporary historian with a strong affinity to Global History. His main research interests are the construction of memory and the politics of history, as well as the history of the Cold War, particularly in Latin America, Europe and the USA. The function of subcultures in critical (e.g. post conflict) periods constitutes a subject of particular investigative passion. His 2007 book on the politics of history and democratization in post-war Guatemala (Geschichtspolitik und Demokratisierung in Guatemala. Historiographie, Nachkriegsjustiz und Entschädigung 1996-2005) has been awarded the Michael Mitteraurer Prize for Social, Cultural and Economic History. Berthold Molden was a researcher for the Austrian Historical Commission. Later he held the DOC-grant of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, was a Junior Visiting Fellow of the Institute for Human Sciences (Vienna) and a visiting fellow at the Asociación para el Avance de las Ciencias Sociales (Guatemala). Currently, Dr. Molden directs an international research project about European memories of the Cold War, based at the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for European History and Public Spheres (Vienna). He teaches at the University of Vienna where he belongs to the Global History working group.During his stay at UCBS, he will continue to work on his research project “Towards a Global History of the Politics of History”: To what extent have controversies on history since 1945 been determined by local structural conditions, or rather by reference to universal and globally spread discourses? Of the project’s six case studies, two are located in the US: the 1971 Winter Soldiers Investigation on US war crimes in Vietnam, and a controversy on restitution to African Americans for the history of slavery in 2001. At the Orfalea Center, Berthold will conduct archival research and interviews on these topics.

Mona Kanwal Sheikh
University of Copenhagen, Denmark
RELIGION AND GLOBAL CONFLICT RESOLUTION

Mona Sheikh holds an M.A. in Political Science from the University of Copenhagen, where she worked with Prof. Ole Weaver (Political Science, International Relations) in the area of ‘comparative secularisms’.  Their research, which was presented at the 2005 conference of the International Studies Association in Honolulu, argues the ‘strategic’ (conflict de-escalating) potential of ‘comparative secularisms’ and begins to build a matrix for doing this kind of study on a handful of countries (France, US, Turkey, Denmark, Pakistan).  She is a member of several associations and committees involved with ethnic minorities, race, and integration issues. These include, since 2002, board membership with the Documentation and Advisory Centre on Racial Discrimination and a vice chair position with the European Commission-supported INGO European Network Against Racism (ENAR). While at UCSB, Mona will continue her research into religion’s role in the sphere of international relations, specifically dealing with approaches to the question of religion and conflict/peace studies. This research should contribute to developing a method to analyze the connection between religion and radicalization by integrating insights from Security Studies and Sociology of Religion, and strengthen the empirical knowledge on the religious discourses which condition radical Islamism.