Joel Alter (United States of America)

In my work I seek to create meaningful, celebratory Jewish community for children at a pluralistic Jewish day school outside Boston. I have three professional roles: Rabbi, Assistant Head of School, and Teacher. The school, serving students in grades K-8, brings together the children of families with a fairly diverse array of Jewish expression, practice, and belief. I seek to shape a program in Jewish prayer and holiday celebration that gives students a serious, experiential education in Jewish heritage and practice, honors their diversity, and cultivates in them the capacity and eagerness to define their Jewish futures. I was ordained a rabbi and trained as a Jewish educator (Masters in Jewish Education) at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America (New York), which is affiliated with the Conservative Movement. (In American Jewish nomenclature, the Conservative Movement is a center-left denomination.) I earned my BA in Jewish History at Columbia University in 1989. I did further professional training at Jerusalem’sShalom Hartman Institute, considering an array of topics in Jewish text and tradition from the perspective of communal values and educational concerns. I came out as a gay man after completing rabbinical school. I’ve lived in Minnesota, on the East Coast of the US, and in Israel. Hiking, cooking, and Shabbat are three of the things that bring me joy.

Fatme Birro (Israel)

Faruk Borić (Bosnia and Herzegovina)

Adar Cohen (Israel)

Lucia Fetzer (Germany)

Bruna Genovese (United States of America)

Jeremy Gunn (United States of America)

Maria Hadjipavlou (Cyprus)

Shqipe Hajredini (Kosovo)

Adnan Huskic (Bosnia and Herzegovina)

Amal Idrissi (Morocco)

Stavros Karayanni (Cyprus)

Christiana Karayianni (Cyprus)

Constanze Kolbe (Germany)

Dilek Latif (Cyprus)

Jeremy Lowe (United States)

Sajida Madni (United Kingdom)

Sajida Madni has been working as a professional organizer for the past 6 years with Birmingham Citizens. Birmingham Citizens is a broad based organization consisting of 30 dues paying member institutions including mosques, churches, trade unions, schools and other community institutions that are committed to working together for the common good. Citizens provides training in the theory and practice of effective organizing to local people in their organizations so that communities can bring about positive change in their own neighborhoods.  Sajida graduated from the University of Birmingham with honors degrees in English and Theology at the age of 18. She went on to working as an English teacher at a large Secondary school in Birmingham. In 2003, at the age of 23, Sajida became Birmingham’s youngest Head of Faculty in English as well as being the Head of the Citizenship department. Sajida has grown up in Birmingham and is a member of the Islamic Society of Britain (ISB). She has been involved in leadership development work with ISB’s youth wing, Young Muslims and also serves as a volunteer teacher for Birmingham Citizens’ member schools. Sajida is a keen footballer and captained the Aston Villa Ladies Team for three years as well representing her university’s women’s side. In recognition of her achievements, Sajida was awarded the ‘Young Alumna of the Year’ award from the University of Birmingham in 2007. 

Maximiano Ngabirano (Uganda)

Raja’i Nusseibeh (Israel / Palestine)

Plamen Petrov (Bulgaria)

Freeman Poritz (Canada / Israel)

Freeman Poritz moved to Israel from Vancouver, Canada in 2004, learned Hebrew, and served in the Israel Defense Forces for two and a half years. He holds a BA in Honors History from the University of British Columbia and wrote his undergraduate thesis on the role of journalism in Egyptian-Israeli relations from 1977-1979 as seen through three Israeli newspapers. Prior to joining USAID West Bank and Gaza as a Travel Assistant, he worked as a teacher at the Jaffa Institute instructing Jewish and Arab children in Hebrew, English, Mathematics, and acceptable social behavior. He has lived on two Kibbutzim and currently lives in South Tel Aviv. His interests include hiking, reading, studying languages, music and travel.

Madeleine Reeves (United Kingdom)

Tania Reytan-Marincheshka (Bulgaria)

Mustafa Yunus (United Kingdom)

Mohammad Yusuf (Indonesia)

Sana’ Zeidan (Israel / Palestine)

Mustafa Abu Sway (Palestine)

Vassos Argyrou (Cyprus)

Elisa Bosio (Cyprus)

Rebecca Bryant (United States of America)

Hillel Cohen (Israel)

Costas Constantinou (Cyprus)

Hugues de Courtivron (France)
Hugues de Courtivron (1946), Brigadier General (ret.), is part of the Peace School (Grenoble) and the Movement ATD Fourth World International. He lectures on civil-military cooperation and/or multinationality in crisis management, and on democratic control of security forces. He participated in the crisis management in New Caledonia (1986), then in Bosnia –Herzegovina as Sarajevo Sector chief of staff (UNPROFOR, 1994). In charge of Central Europe and Balkans strategic affairs in Defense Ministry(1995-1997). Member of the Government Mission for south-eastern Europe (1999-2000), Director of KFOR Headquarters and senior French military representative (Kosovo, 2001-2002). OSCE Regional Director in Tuzla (Bosnia-Herzegovina, 2003-2004). He was senior expert in Geneva Center for Democratic Control of Armed Forces in charge of security sector reform in Bosnia-Herzegovina (DCAF Geneva, 2004-2006). He has led a European Commission funded Project to support the building up of the administration of the Parliament of Kosovo (Pristina, 2006 to 2008).

Lellos Demetriades (Cyprus)
Lellos Demetriades was called to the Bar by the Hon. Society of Gray's Inn in London, in 1955 and has been a practicing Barrister in Nicosia ever since. He contributed a number of papers and articles on legal matters, mainly on company Law and Insurance Law. He is also serving as a non-executive director on the board of a number of local and International Business Companies. From 1960 to 1970 he was a member of the House of Representatives of the Republic of Cyprus and served as Clerk of the House and Chairman of a number of the Committees of the House. From 1966 to 1970 he was the Floor Leader (in the House) of the Government Majority Party - the Patriotic Front and served as the Greek Cypriot member in the Joint Committee with the Turkish Cypriots. During 1961 and 1963 he participated in the sessions of the Consultative Assembly of the Council of Europe and since 1978 up to 2001 he was a member of the Permanent Conference (now called the Congress) of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe and served as the Chairman of its Cultural Committee for 4 years. He was the Mayor of Nicosia for 30 consecutive years from 23rd December 1971 up to the 31st December 2001, and served up to December 2001 as the Chairman of the Union of Municipalities of Cyprus, (since its establishment in 1980), The Chairman of the Slaughterhouse Board of Cyprus (since its establishment in 1981), The Chairman of the Sewerage Board of Nicosia (since 1972 up to December 2001), the Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Welfare Fund for Deaf Children of Cyprus (since 1970) and a member of the Fulbright Commission in Cyprus for 30 years. In 2006 he was elected vice-President of the Association of Former Members of the Cyprus House of Representatives. In 1979 he was the President of the Rotary Club of Nicosia.

Avishai Ehrilich (Israel)

Nehemia Friedland (Israel)

Friedland is Professor of Social Psychology, Vice President for Academic Affairs, The Academic College of Tel Aviv-Yaffo. Formerly, President of the College, Chair of the Psychology department, Tel Aviv University, Professor of Psychology TAU, member of the Israel Council of Higher Education, member of the Council's committee for budgeting and planning.

Mete Hatay (Cyprus)

Robert W. Hefner (United States of America)

Chara Makriyianni (Cyprus)

Farid Mirbagheri (Cyprus)

Daniel Monterescu

Daniel Monterescu is assistant professor of urban anthropology at the Central European University in Budapest and a Marie Curie postdoctoral fellow at the European University Institute in Florence. He received his Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Chicago (2005). Monterescu studies ethnic relations and urban space in bi-national (mixed) towns as part of a larger project on identity, sociality and gender relations in Mediterranean Cities. His previous projects examine the construction of Arab masculinity and the narration of life stories in Jaffa. His publications feature articles in Public Culture, World Development, International Journal of Middle East Studies, Journal of Mediterranean Studies, Theory and Criticism, Israeli Sociology and contributions to numerous edited volumes in English, Arabic and Hebrew including Islamic Masculinities (Zed Press), and Re-approaching Borders: New Perspectives on the Study of Israel and Palestine (Rowman and Littlefield). He is author (with Haim Hazan) of Twilight Nationalism: Tales of Traitorous Identities – a bilingual (Arabic-Hebrew) study of autobiographical narratives of Palestinian and Jewish elderly in Jaffa, and editor (with Dan Rabinowitz) of Mixed Towns, Trapped Communities: Historical Narratives, Spatial Dynamics and Gender Relations in Jewish-Arab Mixed Towns in Israel/Palestine (Ashgate Publishing, 2007).

Montgomery has conducted long-term anthropological field research in the Kyrgyz Republic, Uzbekistan and Albania, and his work focuses on the transmission of religious and cultural knowledge, expressions of everyday religious life, and social aspects of religious change in Central Asia and the Balkans. He is a Visiting Assistant Professor in Anthropology at the University of Pittsburgh; has held Postdoctoral Fellowships in Religion, Conflict and Peacebuilding at Emory University and the University of Notre Dame; worked as a Legislative Assistant for the U.S. House of Representatives; and served as a U.S. Peace Corps Volunteer.

Yiannis Papadakis (Cyprus)
Yiannis Papadakis holds a doctorate in social anthropology from Cambridge University and is currently Associate Professor at the Department of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Cyprus. He is author of Echoes from the Dead Zone: Across the Cyprus Divide (I. B. Tauris, 2005), co-editor of Divided Cyprus: Modernity, History and an Island in Conflict (Indiana University Press, 2006), and editor of a 2006 special issue of Postcolonial Studies on Cyprus. He has conducted fieldwork in Turkey, both sides of divided Nicosia, and in the mixed village of Pyla which lies inside the border area dividing Cyprus.

Nicos Peristianis (Cyprus)

Schapiro has been an attorney in Boston, Massachusetts, for over 35 years, representing individual clients and governmental agencies in particular in the field of housing and urban development. He had also served as a Board Member for 20 years and President of the Board of Camp Ramah in New England for 7 years - a Jewish educational institution under the supervision of the Jewish Theological Seminary. For the last four years his firm has served as the corporate attorney for the ISSRPL. He has recently taken the position of the General Counsel for a mutual fund located in Washington, DC, that invest union pension funds and pension monies from public employee pension plans in housing projects across the United States. The program has multiple objectives notably including securing a competitive return on investment, facilitating the construction and/or rehabilitation of affordable housing for low and moderate income and middle class working families and creating jobs for union workers. Since 2007 he has worked with the ISSRPL in developing the facilitation components of the school.

Seligman is Professor of Religion at Boston University and Research Associate at the Institute for Culture, Religion and World Affairs there. He has lived and taught at universities in the United States, in Israel and in Hungary where he was a Fulbright Fellow from 1990-1992. He lived close to twenty years in Israel where he was a member of Kibbutz Kerem Shalom in the early 1970s. His books include The Idea of Civil Society (Free Press, 1992), Inner-worldly Individualism(Transaction Press, 1994), The Problem of Trust (Princeton University Press, 1997),Modernity’s Wager: Authority, the Self and Transcendence (Princeton University Press, 2000) with Mark Lichbach Market and Community (Penn State University Press, 2000), Modest Claims: Dialogues and Essays on Tolerance and Tradition(Notre Dame University Press, 2004) and with Robert Weller, Michael Puett and Bennett Simon, Ritual and its Consequences: An Essay on the Limits of Sincerity(Oxford University Press, 2008). His work has been translated into over a dozen languages. He lives in Newton, Massachusetts with his wife and two daughters.

Salim Tamari (Palestine)

Nicos Trimikliniotis (Cyprus)

Rahel Wasserfall (United States of America / France)

Oren Yiftachel (Israel)

Nira Yuval-Davis (United Kingdom)