Islam and the "Russian World"

Dr. Phil Dorroll is Associate Professor of Religion at Wofford College in South Carolina, USA. His published research has focused on the history of modern Islamic theology in Turkish, classical Islamic systematic theology in Arabic, and Eastern Christian theology in classical Arabic. He is the author of the book Islamic Theology in the Turkish Republic, and other articles and public writings that have appeared in venues such as Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Journal of Islamic Studies, Studies in World Christianity, The Wheel, Contemporary Islam, Review of Middle East Studies, and Public Orthodoxy. His research on Islamic theology has also been translated into Albanian, Bosnian, and Turkish. His current research and writing focuses on understanding the historical relationship between Eastern Orthodoxy and Sunni Islam, and the relationship between Orthodox theology and human rights.

Dr. Peter Mandaville is Professor of International Affairs in the Schar School of Policy & Government and Director of the Ali Vural Ak Center for Global Islamic Studies, both at George Mason University. He is also a Senior Research Fellow at Georgetown University’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace & World Affairs, and a Senior Visiting Expert at the United States Institute of Peace (USIP). From 2011-12 he served in government at the U.S. State Department as a member of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s Policy Planning Staff, and then again from 2015-16 as a Senior Advisor in the Secretary of State’s Office of Religion & Global Affairs where he helped to build the capacity of American diplomats to engage with religious actors to advance U.S. foreign policy and national security objectives. Previous affiliations have included the Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS) and the Pew Research Center. He is the author of the books Islam & Politics (3rd edition, 2020) and Transnational Muslim Politics: Reimagining the Umma (2001) as well as several co-edited books including, most recently, Wahhabism and the World: Understanding Saudi Arabia’s Global Influence on Islam (Oxford University Press, 2022) and The Geopolitics of Religious Soft Power: How States Use Religion in Foreign Policy (Oxford University Press, Forthcoming 2023). He has also published numerous journal articles, book chapters, and op-ed/commentary pieces in outlets such as Foreign Affairs, the International Herald Tribune, The Guardian, The Atlantic Online and Foreign Policy. He has testified multiple times before the U.S. Congress on topics including political Islam, U.S. counterterrorism policy, and human rights in the Middle East. His research has been supported by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Social Science Research Council, the British Council, and the Henry Luce Foundation.

Dr. Gulnaz Sibgatullina is a postdoctoral fellow at Amsterdam School for Regional, Transnational, and European Studies at the University of Amsterdam and the Institute for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies at George Washington University. Her research interests focus on the history and presence of Islam in Europe, sociology of religion and religious language, and postcolonial (translation) studies. Her ongoing research project, funded by a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Action Fellowship, brings into the spotlight a broad international network of European converts to Islam. In 2019-21, Dr. Sibgatullina was a member of the European Research Council “The European Qur’an. Islamic Scripture in European Culture and Religion 1150-1850” synergy team. In 2014-19, she worked on her doctoral thesis as part of the research group “The Russian language of Islam” led by Prof. Michael Kemper and Prof. Jos Schaeken and funded by The Dutch Research Council. Dr. Sibgatullina has also been a visiting scholar at the Goethe University (Germany), the University of Edinburgh (UK), and the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana (USA), and has held the position of Lecturer and Researcher in the department of Russian and Eurasian Studies at Leiden University (the Netherlands).