Founders

Nassef Manabilang ADIONG is Assistant Professor at the Institute of Islamic Studies and affiliate faculty member at the Center for International Studies of the University of the Philippines, Diliman. He focuses on comparative research between (1) Islam and International Relations, (2) Islam and Bangsamoro, and (3) Islam and Modernity. Nassef founded the Philippine International Studies Organization (PHISO) in 2015 and co-founded Co-IRIS in 2013. He authored, edited, and co-edited articles and edited volumes of topics and issues about ‘Islam and International Relations’ published by the Alternatives: Turkish Journal of International Relations (2009), The Quarterly Journal of Political Studies of Islamic World (2012), SAGE Publications (2012), ABC-CLIO (2012, 2014, 2017), Journal of Islamic State Practices in International Law (2013), Cambridge Scholars Publishing (2013), Islamic Perspective Journal (2015), Palgrave Macmillan (2016), Blackwell Reference Online (2016), Routledge (forthcoming 2018), and Oxford Research Encyclopedia of International Studies (forthcoming 2018). He is the Editor-in-Chief of the “International Relations in Southeast Asia” series (Routledge) and Co-editor of the “Islam and International Relations” series (Gerlach Press). He is presently serving, and has served, as reviewer of Foreign Policy Analysis (2017), Millennium: Journal of International Studies (2017), GEOPOLITICA (2016), Global Studies Journal (2012-present), etc. Contact Nassef at contact@nassef.info.

Deina ABDELKADER is Associate Professor in the Political Science department at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell and a Visiting Scholar at Alwaleed Islamic Studies Program at Harvard University. Abdelkader is a Comparitivist and International Relations specialist. Her scholarly interests and research focus on the Middle East and North Africa, Comparative Democratization in the Muslim World, Islamic Activism, and the Role of Muslim Women in Religious Interpretation. She is the author of Social Justice in Islam (2000) and Islamic Activists: The Anti-Enlightenment Democrats (Pluto Press, 2011). She has also authored a number of articles; her latest is Coercion, Peace and the Issue of Jihad in the Digest of Middle East Studies, and a book chapter titled: “Modernity, Islam and Religious Activism”, The New Global Order and the Middle East, Ashgate Publishers, (2012). Abdelkader is also one of two women on the Islamic Jurisprudential Council of North America (Fiqh Council of North America) and she is also part of the editorial board of the Digest of Middle East Studies. Contact Deina at deina_abdelkader@uml.edu.

Raffaele MAURIELLO is Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Persian Literature and Foreign Languages, Allameh Tabataba’i University, Tehran (Iran), and an invited Lecturer at the Master’s program in Geopolitics and Global Security at the Sapienza, University of Rome. Previously, he was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Faculty of World Studies, University of Tehran (2015-2017). He achieved a first-class honors degree in Oriental Languages and Civilizations (2002) and a Ph.D. in Islamic Civilization: History and Philology (2009) from the Sapienza, University of Rome. He also holds two MAs in Translation and Interpreting (English-Italian, Spanish-Arabic). Dr. Mauriello is a historian and linguist, specializing in International Relations, Islam, and the Hispanic World. He is the co-founder of the International Relations and Islamic Studies Research Cohort (Co-IRIS). In 2013, he was awarded The World Prize for the Book of the Year of the Islamic Republic of Iran in the field of Islamic Studies. Dr. Mauriello is a regular commentator on international affairs on television (BBC, HispanTV, PressTV, RussiaToday, NHK) and radio (Radio24, RadioCusanoCampus, RNE). He is fluent in Persian, English, Spanish, Italian, French, and Arabic. Contact Raffaele at raffaele.mauriello@me.com.