Dr. Dino Abazovic is a sociologist and a professor at the University of Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina. He has also worked as the Director of the Human Rights Center of the University of Sarajevo and as the Academic Coordinator of the Religious Studies Program of the Center for Interdisciplinary Postgraduate Studies at University of Sarajevo. His research is focused on the role of organized religion in conflict and post-conflict societies, the political role of religion in post-socialist transition and religious revivalism, as well as a nexus between religious claims, transitional justice and human rights in emerging democracies.

Dr. Abazovic has conducted research in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia. He has published a number of chapters and papers in English and the South-Slavic languages, including three books in Bosnian (“Bosnian Muslims between Secularization and Desecularisation”, 2012; “Religion in Transition: Essays on Religion and Politics”, 2010, “For God and Nation: Sociological approach to Religious Nationalism”, 2006), and  co-authored a book with Jelena Radojković and Milan Vukomanović (“Religions of the World: Buddhism, Christianity, Islam”, Belgrade Center for Human Rights, 2007). With Mitja Velikonja he edited a book “Post-Yugoslavia: New Cultural and Political Perspectives”, Palgrave MacMillan, Basingstoke, UK, 2015, as a result of collaborative interdisciplinary study research project (group study fellowship) at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences (NIAS) 2012. He lives and works in Sarajevo.

Dr. Zvi Bekerman teaches anthropology of education at the School of Education, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and is a research fellow at The Harry S. Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace in the same university. His main interests are in the study of cultural, ethnic and national identity, including identity processes and negotiation during intercultural encounters and in formal/informal learning contexts. He is particularly interested in how concepts such as culture and identity intersect with issues of social justice, intercultural and peace education, and citizenship education. In addition to publishing multiple papers in a variety of academic journals, Bekerman is the founding editor of the refereed journal Diaspora, Indigenous, and Minority Education: An International Journal.

Among his most recent books: Bekerman, Z., & Zembylas, M. (2017). Psychologized language in education: Denaturalizing a regime of truth, Palgrave Macmillan – Springer; Bekerman, Zvi (2016), The Promise of Integrated and Multicultural Bilingual Education: Inclusive Palestinian-Arab and Jewish Schools in Israel, Oxford University Press, 2016; Bekerman, Zvi & Michalinos Zembylas (2012), Teaching Contested Narratives Identity, Memory and Reconciliation in Peace Education and Beyond. London, Cambridge University Press; and Bekerman, Zvi; Geisen, Thomas (Eds.) (2012) International Handbook of Migration, Minorities and Education Understanding Cultural and Social Differences in Processes of Learning. New York: Springer. Claire McGlynn, Michalinos Zembylas, & Zvi Bekerman (Eds.) (2013) Integrated Education in Conflicted Societies. Palgrave, Mcmillan.

Dr. Jelisaveta Blagojević received her Ph.D. in gender studies from the University of Novi Sad, Association of the Centers for Interdisciplinary and Multidisciplinary Studies and Research. Her dissertation was entitled “Theoretical Contribution to Gender Studies: Discourses on Identity, Difference and Otherness” (2006). She received an M.Phil in gender and culture studies from Open University London and a B.A. in philosophy from the Faculty of Philosophy, Belgrade University.

Dr. Blagojević teaches at the Faculty of Media and Communications, Singidunum University, and has served as the university’s dean of academic affairs since 2006. She also has worked at the Belgrade Women’s Studies and Gender Research Center as a coordinator and lecturer since 2001. Since 2003 she has been a visiting lecturer at the gender and politics program at the Political Science Faculty, Belgrade University. She has taught as a visiting lecturer at universities across Southeast Europe. Her research interests include contemporary (political) philosophy, media studies, queer studies, and gender studies. She was born and currently lives in Belgrade.

Her publications include: Politics of Unthinkable: introduction into anti-fascist life, FMK, 2014, Belgrade; "Between Walls. Provincialisms, human rights, sexualities and Serbian public discourses on EU integration" in De-Centring Western Sexualities - Central and Eastern European Perspectives, Robert Kulpa, Birkbeck College, London and Joanna Mizieliñska (eds.), Ashgate, UK, 2011.; "Kultura koja dolazi" ("Culture to Come") in Kultura, Drugi, Žene (Culture, Others, Women) eds. Svenka Savić, Jasenka Kodrnja and Svetlana Slapšak, Institut za društvena istraživanja, Hrvatsko filozofsko društvo and Plejada, Croatia, 2010; Hieroglyphs of Jealousy, Research Center in Gender Studies, Euro-Balkan Institute Skopje, 2008; Zajednica onih koji nemaju zajednicu (Community Without Community), FMK, Belgrade, 2008; Gender and Identity, ed. Collection: See Theories in Gender Studies, (Skopje, Ljubljana, Belgrade) in 2006.

Prof. Marie Breen-Smyth is Visiting Professor in the University of Massachusetts, Boston, where she is also Senior Faculty Fellow in the Center for Peace, Democracy and Development in the McCormack Graduate School at UMASS Boston, and Research Affiliate at the National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, in the University of Otago, New Zealand and Professor Emerita and former Associate Dean in the University of Surrey, England. She has also taught at universities in Wales, Northern Ireland and Germany. She was 2002-3 Jennings Randolph Senior Fellow in the United States Institute of Peace. When in the Department of International Politics in Aberystwyth University, together with Richard and Jackson and Jeroen Gunning she founded the field of Critical Terrorism Studies and the journal Critical Studies on Terrorism. In Northern Ireland she established the Institute for Conflict Research and led the first comprehensive research into the effects of the Troubles, The Cost of the Troubles Studies. She also co-founded Derry Wellwoman, a free health centre for women. Her field work experience includes Northern Ireland, South Africa, Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Ghana, Nigeria, Macedonia. She is a native of Northern Ireland.

Her most recent publications include: ‘Victims and Survivors in the Northern Ireland Conflict’ in Terhoven, P (2018) Victimhood and Acknowledgement; the other side of terrorism. European History Yearbook; “The Securitized Western Imagination: the lone (white) wolf and suspect communities” in Martini, A., Ford, K. and Jackson, R. (2019) Encountering Extremism: A Critical Examination of Theoretical Issues and Local Challenges Manchester University Press and Interviewing combatants: Lessons from the Boston College Case in David Miller (ed) Contemporary Social Science Special Issue (forthcoming, 2019) 'A critical approach: violence, ‘victims’ and ‘innocents’' (with Samantha Cooke) in Kennedy-Pipe, C. Mabon, C and Clubb, G. (eds) ‘Terrorism and Political Violence: the Evolution of Contemporary Insecurity’. ​ Sage (2015); ‘Everywhere and forever’ War on ‘Terrorism’ and the challenge for Transitional justice' Institute of Transitional Justice (forthcoming); The Ashgate Research Companion on Political Violence, (Ashgate 2013) and Terrorism; A critical introduction with Jackson, Gunning and Lee Jarvis (Palgrave, 2011). She has also made two films with Northern Visions about the impact of political violence, And then there was silence (2000) and Injured (2011).

Her practitioner experience includes working as a community organizer in North Belfast during the conflict in Northern Ireland, as a licensed clinician in mental health in Massachusetts, USA, work in establishing the criminal justice inspection agency during the peace process in Northern Ireland and in integrating community restorative justice into the state system, and organising field missions and reports for the UN Special Representative of the Secretary General of the United Nations on Children and Armed Conflict on the issue of the recruitment of children into armed groups. She writes on political violence and terror, victim politics, casualty counting, veterans’ affairs and has regional interests in Northern Ireland, South Africa, West Africa, the Middle East and Pakistan.