National Advisor

As’ad Ghanem

As’ad Ghanem is Professor at the School of Political Sciences, University of Haifa. Ghanem’s theoretical work has explored the legal, institutional and political conditions in ethnic states. He has covered issues such as Palestinian political orientations, the establishment and political structure of the Palestinian Authority, and majority-minority politics in a comparative perspective. His books include Palestinian Politics after Arafat: A Failed National Movement (Indiana Series in Middle East Studies). Ghanem has initiated several empowerment programs for Palestinians in Israel.

National Advisor

Deen Sharp

Deen Sharp is the co-director of Terreform, Advanced Center for Urban Research, and a doctoral candidate in the Earth and Environmental Science program, specializing in Geography, at the CUNY Graduate Center. He is the co-editor of Beyond the Square: Urbanism and the Arab Uprisings (Urban Research: 2016). Previously, he was a freelance journalist and consultant based in Lebanon. His research and writing focus on contemporary geography of the Middle East, urban political economy, war and violence. His current project concerns the corporation and urban space in post-war Beirut. He has written for a number of publications, including, Jadaliyya, Portal9,the ArabStudiesJournal and The Guardian. He has worked for several UN agencies, including UNDP and UN-Habitat, governments and international NGOs and is a leading member of Terreform, Center for Advanced Urban Research.

National Advisor

Gokhan Bacik

Gokhan Bacik is Professor at the Department of Politics and European Studies, Palacky University, Olomouc, Czech Republic

National Advisor

Joseph Alagha

Joseph Alagha (PhD, Free University of Amsterdam) is Professor of Political Science at Haigazian University, Beirut. He is the author of Hizbullah’s DNA and the Arab Spring (2013), Hizbullah’s identity construction (2011), Hizbullah’s documents (2011) and The shifts in Hizbullah’s ideology (2006), the last three published by Amsterdam University Press. His current research deals with political mobilization and the performing arts in the Middle East and North Africa. Email: jalagha2001@yahoo.com

National Advisor

Marie McAuliffe

Marie McAuliffe is a Senior Fellow at the Global Migration Centre. She joined the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in August 2016 as the head of its Migration Policy Research Division. She is an international migration specialist with almost 20 years of experience in migration as a practitioner, program manager, senior official, analyst, researcher and more recently in academia at the Australian National University (ANU). Click here to read more

National Advisor

Mirzokhid Rakhimov

Mirzokhid Rakhimov is head of ‘Modern and contemporary history’ department of the Institute of History of the Academy of Science Uzbekistan and Professor at the University of World Economy and Diplomacy in Tashkent. His scholarly interests cover contemporary history, regional and international relations in post-Soviet Central Asia. His selected publications include: S. Jonboboev, M. Rakhimov, R. Seidelmann, (eds). (2015) Central Asia, issues, problems and perspectives. Cuvillier Publishing House, Goettingen, P.298; A. Sengupta, M. Rakhimov (eds). (2015) South and Central Asia: insights and commentaries. KW, New Delhi. P.409; Mirzokhid Rakhimov. (2015) Central Asia in the context of Western and Russian interests // L` Europe en formation. Journal of Studies on European integration and Federalism. Spring 2015. Number. 375. P.140-154; K.K.Warikoo, M.A.Rakhimov (eds). Himalayan and Central Asian Studies (Uzbekistan Special). New Delhi. 2015. P.230; S. Jonboboev, M. Rakhimov, R. Seidelmann (eds). (2014). Central Asia today: Countries, Neighbors, and the Region. Peter Lang Publishing House, Frankfurt/Berlin/Bern/Brussels, New York/Oxford/Vienna. Pp.374; Rakhimov M. (2014) Central Asia and Japan: bilateral and multilateral relations /// Journal of Eurasian studies. Amsterdam-Boston-London. January. Pp.77-87.

National Advisor

Tamar Hermann

Tamar Hermann, Academic Director, Guttmann Center for Public Opinion and Policy Research, The Israel Democracy Institute.A faculty member of the Political Science Department at the Open University of Israel, Professor Tamar Hermann has co-edited the monthly Peace Index (with Professor Ephraim Ya’ar) since 1994, and has edited the annual Israeli Democracy Index since 2010. She has authored, edited and co-edited publications on the region. Her research work has also been published in peer reviewed journals and as book chapters. She taught at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Tel Aviv University, and was a guest lecturer at Princeton University, Queen’s University in Belfast, and the WZB Berlin Social Science Center.

National Advisor

Nina Mukerjee Furstenau

Nina Mukerjee Furstenau is a journalist, book author and a current 2018-19 U.S. Fulbright-Nehru Global Scholar in Kolkata researching her upcoming book, Green Chili & Other Impostors based on the heritage foods of Bengal. She is the editor for the book series, American Foodstory, at the University of Iowa Press, former director of food systems communication at the University of Missouri’s Science and Agricultural Journalism Program, and adjunct faculty at the Missouri School of Journalism. Her research interests include food history and identity, food systems and hunger, and the flavors of place. During her tenure at MU, she established the curriculum for the Food and Wine Journalism program and received the University’s Teaching Excellence Award. She has served as socio-economic research project manager for the USAID and McKnight Foundation Climate Resilient Beans Innovation Lab and the USAID Soybean Innovation Lab in Mozambique and Ghana from 2013-2018 .Furstenau graduated from the Missouri School of Journalism in 1984 and went into the Peace Corps in Tunisia from 1984-86, where her love of food story and its link to culture and nutrition was born. She was publisher of two heavy equipment magazines and an environmental soil and groundwater publication from 1987-2001, before doing her graduate work at the University of Missouri in English-Creative Writing. She is a frequent speaker about writing, storytelling, and food identity at conferences such as Nonfiction Now, Unbound Books, and Midwest Foodways Alliance. Her project in Kolkata this year hopes to use the lens of food to cut across cultural boundaries, and bring journalism and creative non-fiction to the dynamic research area of food ethnography. For more information, please see https://www.ninafurstenau.com/

National Advisor

Oleg A. Donskikh

Oleg A. Donskikh is Dr of Sc. (Philosophy), PhD (Monash, Australia), Professor, Head of the Department of Philosophy and Humanities of Novosibirsk State University of Economics and Management.Russian philosopher, linguist, philologist, writer.Author of more than 250 works on the history of language, history of philosophy, philosophy of education, as well as philosophical essays and journalistic works. Sphere of interests: history of philosophy (Ancient philosophy, Russian philosophy, in particular, Eurasianism), origin of language, metaphysics in poetry, modern social philosophy – the place of man in the modern society, Siberia as megaregion. Founder and editor-in-chief of the scientific journal “Ideas and ideals”.Member of the Union of Russian Journalists.Main works: Evolutionary Environments. Homo Sapiens-an Endangered Species? Innsbruck: StudiaUniversitatsverlag, 2018. (With co-authors).Witnesses of infinity.Metaphysics in poetry.Lap Lambert Academic Publishing RU, 2018.(In Rus.)Degradation (Thinking about education and its place in our culture).Moscow, 2013.(In Rus.)To the origin of language.In joke and seriously.3-rd edition. Moscow: Librokom, 2011. (In Rus.)The Formation of Russian National Philosophy.Lambert Academic Publishing, 2009. Will for dignity. Novosibirsk, 2007 (Sec/ edition – Moscow, 2017). Island Eltam, or One happy Russian life. Novosibirsk, 2006.History of world culture.Course of lectures.Part 1.(With N. Makarova). 1994. Ancient philosophy. Mythology in the mirror of reflection.Moscow, 1993; 2-nd edition Moscow, 2010 (With A.N. Kochergin) (In Rus.).Language in the ocean of languages.Novosibirsk, 1997 (In Rus.).Text as a cultural phenomenon.Novosibirsk, 1989.(With co-authors).To the origin of language.Novosibirsk, 1988.The origin of language as a philosophical problem.Novosibirsk, 1984. Editor and author of study books: Philosophy in the modern world (2016), Essays on the history of philosophy (2017).

National Advisor

Jael Silliman

Jael Silliman is an author, scholar, and women’s right activist. She currently works as a consultant on gender and development, women of color and reproductive rights, and gender and environment issues. She lives in New York City and Calcutta. She is widely held in libraries worldwide. Silliman grew up in Calcutta, India and attended Loreto House. She earned her B.A. in History and Politics of South Asia and China from Wellesley College, and M.Ed. in Planning and Administration for International Development from Harvard University. She went on to do her M.A. in History from University of Texas-Austin, and her Doctorate in Education is from Columbia University.On completing her doctorate, Silliman became a Program Officer at the Jessie Smith Noyes Foundation and managed the Sustainable Agriculture Portfolio, the Population portfolio which she transformed into a Reproductive Rights Portfolio and introduced grants on Gender and Environment issues. She then moved to the University of Iowa where she became a tenured Associate Professor of Women Studies. In 2002, Silliman began a six-year term as the Program Officer for reproductive rights at the Ford Foundation, for its Human Rights Unit.She has several publications to her credit, having co-written Undivided Rights: Women of Colour Organizing for Reproductive Justice with Elena Gutierrez, Loretta Ross and Marlene Gerber Fried, and co-edited Policing the National Body: Race, Gender, and Criminalization with Anannya Bhattacharjee. Apart from writing several academic papers on transnational feminist issues, women's rights and reproductive rights, she has also worked on issues relating to the Calcutta Jewish community. Most recently, she has developed Recalling Jewish Calcutta, a digital archive which has brought to attention the rich cultural heritage of the Jewish community in Calcutta. She collaborated with the School of Cultural Texts and Records, Jadavpur University; Trinity College, Dublin and National University of Ireland, Maynooth for the creation of this website. She has been awarded the Fulbright Program scholarship, and her most recent publications include novels: The Man With Many HatsThe Teak Almirah and a book about Kolkata's holy places: Where Gods Reside. Jael Silliman writes for international and Indian media outlets, including Scroll.in, The Telegraph, The Hindu, Business Standard, Huffington Post and others. Her publications, include, Dangerous Intersections: Feminist Perspectives on Population, Environment and Development (First Editor with Ynestra King), South End Press, Boston Spring 1999; Zed Books, London; Policing the National Body: Race, Gender, and Criminalization, co-edited with Anannya Bhattacharjee (Cambridge, South End Press, 2002); Undivided Rights: Women of Color Organizing for Reproductive Justice, with co-authors Elena Gutierrez, Loretta Ross and Marlene Gerber Fried (Cambridge, South End Press, 2004), awarded with 2005 Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award;Jewish Portraits, Indian Frames: Women's Narratives from a Diaspora of Hope(Lebanon, University Press of New England, 2001, in arrangement with Seagull Books)The Man With Many Hats, 2013;The Teak Almirah, Milestone Books,2016;Where Gods Reside, Niyogi Books Pvt. Ltd, 2018  

National Advisor

Charles Ehrlich

Charles E. Ehrlich joined Salzburg Global Seminar as a Program Director in May 2014. He has particular responsibility for designing, developing, and implementing programs on justice, democracy, economics, and rule of law. He has practical experience in legal development working in over a dozen countries, including in the Balkans, the Caucasus, and the Russian Federation, advising governments and public institutions on strategic planning, drafting legislation, and implementing comprehensive reforms in the justice sector, public administration, property rights, freedom of the media, and constitutional law. Dr. Ehrlich has also worked as legal counsel for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in Kosovo, in Georgia, and at its Secretariat in Vienna. At the Claims Resolution Tribunal in Switzerland, he adjudicated claims to Nazi-era bank accounts. He remains affiliated with Wolfson College, Oxford, and has published a book, Lliga Regionalista-Lliga Catalana, 1901-1936 (in Catalan), and numerous academic articles on constitutional law, justice, and political history. Dr. Ehrlich holds an A.B. in history and classics (Latin) from Harvard University, a J.D. from the College of William and Mary, an M.Sc.Econs. in European studies from the London School of Economics, and a D.Phil. on contemporary Spanish history from the University of Oxford.