2022 Conference

Yousef Hamidaddin has worked as an advisor to the World Bank and The Innovative Startups and SMEs Fund (“ISSF”) which is a private sector USD 98 million fund making investments in innovative startups and early stage SMEs. He was a board member of ICTAC...

Mustafa Şen is an associate professor in the Department of Sociology at the Middle East Technical University (METU), Ankara, Turkey. He received his PhD in Sociology from METU with the thesis entitled “Turkish Entrepreneurs in Central Asia: The Case of...

Aurélie Daher is a French, English and Arabic-speaking academic who teaches political science and the sociology of conflicts at University of Paris-Dauphine (PSL), Ecole Normale Supérieure (ENS Ulm) and Sciences Po Paris.  At Paris-Dauphine, she is co...

Farhad Daftary completed his early and secondary education in Tehran, Rome, and London, before going to Washington, D.C., in 1958. He received his B.A. and M.A. degrees from the American University there, and then continued his graduate studies at the...

Dr Gurdofarid Miskinzoda is the Head of Shiʿi Studies Unit (SSU) and Managing Editor of the Shiʿi Heritage Series in the Department of Academic Research and Publications (DARP) of The Institute of Ismaili Studies, London. She also teaches on aspects of...

Shaykh Rizwan Arastu is a graduate of the Islamic Seminary of Qum and Princeton University. He is the founding director of the Islamic Texts Institute, a non-profit aimed at making Islamic sources accessible to non-specialists. He is also the founder of I...

SeyedAmirHossein Asghari is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures at Indiana University Bloomington. He will defend his dissertation “Philosophy and Sufism in the Contemporary Shia Seminary” in May 2022 and will...

Dr Yahia Baiza is a research associate at the Institute of Ismaili Studies, London, United Kingdom, researching education, history, and Islamic and Afghanistan studies, as well as the study of refugee and diaspora communities in Europe, and manuscript...

Paul Walker, Deputy Director for Academic Programs, Center for Middle Eastern Studies, University of Chicago, (Ph.D. University of Chicago, 1974). A former director of the American Research Center in Cairo (1976-86), he has published more than a dozen...

Hussain Jasani is the Head of the South Asian Studies (SAS) Unit at The Institute of Ismaili Studies (IIS), London. As the founding member of the SAS unit at the IIS, Hussain has the responsibility of defining the strategic vision for the Unit, setting...