is Assistant Professor at the Department of Jewish History and Culture at the University of Munich. He obtained his Ph.D. from Tel Aviv University with a thesis on the role of benevolent international Jewish organizations in the Arab world during the 19th and early 20th Centuries. This thesis was published as Neither Asians nor Orientals: International Jewish Organizations and the Europeanization of "Backward" Jews (Würzburg 2005) (in German). His research in Berlin will center on "Maimonides as Icon: Minority Heritage and Collective Identity in Three Mediterranean Cities."

studied Sociology and Social Anthropology at Koc University in Istanbul and at the Universities of London and Cambridge before obtaining her Ph.D. in Social Anthropology from the University of Cambridge. Dr. Biner's current research project is entitled "Imagined Cosmopolites of Mardin: An Ethnographic Study of Cosmopolitanism from the Margins of Contemporary Turkey."

received his Ph.D. from the Faculty of Arts at Cairo University for his thesis entitled "Individual Documents at the Coptic Orthodox Patriarchate - An Archival and Diplomatical Study." He is a member of the Egyptian Historical Society and of the editorial board of Ruzname: The Egyptian Documentary Annual. He  currently is working as a document specialist at Cairo University. Among his publications is a 1999 volume on The Coptic Judiciary in Egypt. In Berlin, Magdi Guirguis will concentrate his research on "The Copts and the West in the Ottoman Period (1517-1798)." From September to December 2006, he holds the Georg-Graf Scholarship of the Catholic Academic Exchange Service, and from January 2007 to July 2007, he will be a fellow of Europe in the Middle East -  the Middle East in Europe.

obtained his Ph.D. from the Atatürk Institute at Bogazici University for his thesis "From Propaganda to National Identity Construction: Turkish Literature and the First World War." In 2005, he received the Afet History Award for his monograph Türk Edebiyati ve Dünya Savasi (Istanbul 2004). He has also written numerous scholarly articles and has co-edited several monographs. Erol Köroglu is currently working as instructor of modern Turkish literature and history at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Sabanci University. While in Berlin, he will conduct research for his project "Perpetual Struggle of the Nation in Turkish Narratives of the Independence War: Literary Cultural History of a Thematic Genre."

studied English Literature and Cultural Studies, receiving her Ph.D. from the Cultural and Development Studies program at Mohammad V, University of Rabat. She wrote her dissertation on "Secular and Islamic Critiques of Fatima Mernissi: Thinking a Post-Foundationalist Islamic Feminism." Her new project deals with "Islamic feminist critical hermeneutics of the Qur'an."

was educated in Nablus, Amman, Cairo, and New York and received her PhD from Columbia University with a dissertation on "Peripheral Visions: The Worlds and Worldviews of Commoner Chronicles in the 18th Century Ottoman Levant." She was Assistant Professor of Middle East History at Concordia University, Montreal and a fellow of the Working Group Modernity and Islam (2005/6).  Among her publications are: "A Room of His Own: the 'History' of the Barber of Damascus (fl. 1762)," in: the MIT Electronic Journal of Middle East Studies 4 (2004), and "The qasida of Layla al-Akhyaliyyah, in: Journal of Arabic Literature 31.2 (2000). Dana Sajdi is currently working on "Civic Identity and Narrations of the Damascus from the 11th to the 20th Centuries."

is a Talmudic scholar and a philosopher. After seven years of studies in different Yeshivas in Jerusalem, he studied History and Philosophy of Sciences and Ideas at Tel-Aviv University. He received his Ph.D. from the Committee on Social Thought of the University of Chicago for his thesis entitled "Temporality and Freedom: Ontological Inquiries into Ethics." Oded Schechter has had several teaching assignments at Tel Aviv University, the University of Chicago, and at Yale University. Among his publications are the scholarly articles "The Logic of Speculative Philosophy and Skepticism in Maimon's Philosophy", "Teitelboim's Babel: Between Aramaic and the Sacred Language" and "Absolute Auschwitz and Spinoza: The Ontological-Metaphysical ground of National Secularism." His ongoing work investigates "The Genealogy of Hebrew: A Critical Investigation Concerning the Formation of a Space between the Christian and Jew as a Metaphysical Ground of a Colonial Project."

is a lecturer at UIN Sunan Kalijaga  (State Islamic University Sunan Kalijaga) in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. He received his education from the State Institute of Islamic Studies in Yogyakarta, from Leiden University, and from Bonn University. He graduated from Bonn University in the field of Oriental and Islamic Studies with a doctoral dissertation on a literary interpretation of the Qur'an. He has published numerous articles and is the editor-in-chief of the al-Jami'a Journal of Islamic Studies. In the academic year 2006/07, he will concentrate his research on "Is an Approach 'Irrespective of Religious Considerations' in Qur'anic Studies Possible?"

currently is Assistant Professor of Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature at the University of Minnesota, where she was also a resident fellow at the University's Institute for Advanced Study during the spring of 2006. For her doctoral dissertation, "Disarming Words: Reading (Post)Colonial Egypt's Double Bond to Europe," which she completed at the University of California, Berkeley, she received the 2005 Charles Bernheimer Prize from the American Comparative Literature Association for the best U.S. dissertation in the field. She is the author of numerous scholarly publications, among these "Reversing the Sentence of Impossible Nostalgia: The Poetics of Postcolonial Migration in Sakinna Boukhedenna and Agha Shahid Ali", in Comparative Literature Studies 40.2 (2003) and essays on Rifa'a al-Tahtawi and Naguib Mahfouz. In Berlin, she will be working on her project "Disarming Words: Empire and the Seductions of Translation in Egypt."

was educated for ten years at a theological seminary in Qum, Iran. He studied Persian Literature at the University of Allamah Tabatabai, Teheran, and Islamic Studies at the Islamic Institute of Higher Education in Beirut. He received his Ph.D. in Religious Studies from St. Joseph University in Beirut with a thesis on the interaction between Islam and Christianity in the Iran during the Safavid epoch. He presently works as a General Director at the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, Iran, and is a member of the editorial board for Kitab-I Mah-I Din journal, Iran. Among his publications is a monograph on contemporary Islamic thought in Iran (Dar al-Jadid, Beirut, 2000). Muhammad Reza Vasfi's current project focuses on "'Two Qur'anic Sciences.' Indicative of a Historical Approach to the Qur'an: Asab al-Nuzul and Al-Nasikh wl-Mansukh."

is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Bogazici University in Istanbul. He was educated at Middle East Technical University in Ankara and later graduated from Binghamton University, earning a Ph.D. in Sociology with his doctoral thesis on "The Culture and Political Economy of Food Consumption Practices in Turkey." Zafer Yenal has held several positions as adjunct lecturer. He has written a monograph on human rights and civil society in Turkey as well as numerous scholarly articles. His new project deals with "Culinary Cosmopolitanism: Changing Forms of Conviviality in the late Nineteenth Century and Early Republican Istanbul."