Memo by Michael Barnett
Michael Barnett is Stassen Chair of International Affairs and the Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs and Professor of Political Science at the University of Minnesota.  Among his recent publications are Eyewitness to a Genocide: The United Nations and Rwanda, Rules for the World: International Organization in World Politics, and Humanitarianism in Question: Politics, Power, and Ethics (co-edited with Tom Weiss).  He is, hopefully finishing a book manuscript on humanitarianism.

Memo by Janice Boddy
Janice Boddy is Professor and Chair of Anthropology at the University of Toronto.   She is a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and past president of the Society for the Anthropology of Religion.  Her research focuses on religion, ritual, embodiment, and gender in Islamic societies, particularly those of Africa.  She is the author of Wombs and Alien Spirits: Women, Men, and the Zar Cult in Northern Sudan (University of Wisconsin Press, 1989), and co-author of Aman, The Story of a Somali Girl (Knopf/Random House/Bloomsbury 1994, translated into 14 languages). Her latest book, Civilizing Women: British Crusades in Colonial Sudan (Princeton University Press, 2007), examines medical and educational efforts to reform the practices of Muslim Sudanese under Anglo-Egyptian rule.

Memo by Philippe Bourmaud
Philippe Bourmaud finished in december 2007 a PhD in history on the training and installation of physicians in the late-Ottoman Middle-East at the Université d'Aix-en-Provence. After teaching during four years in that university and spending a year on French governmental scholarship in Ramallah in 2004-2005, he is now teaching modern and contemporary history at the Université Lyon 3. As a researcher, he is attached to the Institut de Recherche et d'Etude des Mondes Arabe et Musulman (Aix-en-Provence). He has also worked on interreligious sociability and on healthcare within the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

Memo by Glen Chua
Glen Chua is a first-year PhD student in Anthropology at the University of Toronto. He holds a BA from the University of British Columbia, where his honours thesis examined Pentecostalism in a predominantly Muslim village in Tanzania and its role in shaping local conceptions of health and illness. He has been involved in various humanitarian projects throughout East and Southeast Asia, working with an interdenominational evangelical missions organization. His current work will look at charismatic Christian movements in Northeast India and their relation to humanitarian efforts, primarily in the access-restricted state of Nagaland.

Memo by Nandi Dill
Nandi Dill is a PhD student in the Department of Sociology at New York University.  For the past two years she has worked with the Social Science Research Council on developing a platform for disseminating data on social scientific responses to Hurricane Katrina and connecting researchers pursuing related work on disasters.  Her research broadly addresses themes around the sociology of punishment, visual representations of distant suffering and racial and ethnic relations.  She received her B.A. in Economics from Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia.

Memo by Ralitsa Donkova
Ralitsa Donkova is a second-year Ph.D. student at the political science department at University of Minnesota%u2014Twin Cities. She studies comparative politics and international relations. Her research interests are the welfare state and social policy, humanitarianism and radical right parties in Eastern Europe. Ralitsa received a Bachelors degree from Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts, where she majored in politics and minored in art history.

Memo by Bud Duvall (forthcoming)
Raymond Duvall is Morse-Alumni Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Science at the University of Minnesota. His publications include Power in Global Governance (Cambridge University Press, 2005), edited with Michael Barnett, and Cultures of Insecurity: States, Communities and the Production of Danger (University of Minnesota Press, 1999), edited with Jutta Weldes, Mark Laffey and Hugh Gusterson, as well as articles in scholarly journals, most recently International Organization (2005-06), Millennium (2007), Review of International Studies (2008), and Political Theory (2008).  His teaching and research focus on facets of critical international relations theory.  Currently he is completing a manuscript with Himadeep Muppidi that is pertinent to this conference and is titled “Humanitarianism and Its Violences: Bodies, Beings, and the Politics of Caring”.

Memo by Willem Van Eekelen (forthcoming)
Willem van Eekelen is a development economist who works as the Head of Islamic Relief Worldwide’s Policy and Research Unit. Before joining IRW, Willem worked for a range of UN specialised agencies and affiliated organisation (UNHCR, ILO, ESCWA, UNDP, OHR and OSCE). His main areas of interest are development economics, HIV&AIDS, post-conflict reconstruction, refugee affairs, and labour market issues.

Memo by Jennifer Gagnon
Jennifer Gagnon is a PhD candidate in political science at the University of Minnesota, specializing in political theory and International Relations. Her research interests focus on the theme of violence and politics. As a political theorist, Jennifer orients herself via the ancient Greeks and draws on Greek Tragedy as a mode of inquiry into the present predicament. Her work broadly operates in the borderlands between classics, literary and cultural theory, philosophy, and political science. She received her B.A. Hons. in political science from the University of British Columbia. issues.

Memo by Rosemary Hicks
Rosemary R. Hicks is a PhD candidate in the North American Religions subfield of the Columbia University Religion Department and specializes in Islam in North America.  Her research examines how religious groups in the United States define American identity while negotiating debates about secularism, pluralism, multiculturalism, and human rights. Rosemary’s dissertation is an ethno-history that charts Cold War era inter-religious and academic endeavors involving Islam so as to discuss how these histories have influenced some of the ways Americans think about religion, Islam, pluralism, and human rights. Specifically, she explores how ideas about Islamic mysticism developed in the context of Cold War modernization projects and how Sufi Muslims in Manhattan relate to, invoke, and negotiate these histories as they endeavor to educate national and international audiences about “American Islam.”

Rosemary received an MA from the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley and a Masters in Philosophy and Certificate in Women’s Studies from Columbia University.  She has published in The Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, Comparative Islamic Studies, American Quarterly, and other venues, and is currently an American Fellow with the American Association of University Women and a Mellon Graduate Fellow at the Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy at Columbia University.  

Memo by Denis Kennedy
Denis Kennedy is a PhD candidate in Political Science at the University of Minnesota.  His subfields are international relations and theory; more specifically, he is interested in questions surrounding international organization, humanitarianism, and critical theories of power.  His dissertation will look at imagery and humanitarian organizations, specifically focusing on images of human suffering as they are produced and disseminated by agencies, and at the ethical dilemmas these agencies face.  Denis received his BA from Bucknell University, where he majored in International Relations, Political Science, and French.  His honors thesis looked at the exercise of power through constructed narratives of nation, state, and citizen in French primary school textbooks.

Memo by Garnet Kindervater
Garnet Kindervater holds a Master's degree in Comparative Studies in Discourse and Society from the University of Minnesota where his work focused on the philosophies of Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault, Karl Marx and Baruch Spinoza. In the fall he will join the Department of Political Science at the University of Minnesota to write a dissertation on forms of political organization that take violence as their primary mode of expression.

Memo by Nida Kirmani
Nida Kirmani recently completed her PhD in Sociology from the University of Manchester. Her thesis, 'Questioning 'the Muslim Woman': the Narration of Multiple Boundaries in Zakir Nagar,' looked at the formation of religious identity in a majority-Muslim neighbourhood in Delhi.  Nida also holds an MA in Development Studies also from the University of Manchester.  Alongside her academic experience, Nida has worked with human rights organisations in the US, Egypt and in India. Her primary research interests are related to religion, gender and development in South Asia, and she is currently undertaking a study of the relationship between religious groups and the women's movement in India. Nida is working jointly as a Researcher with the University of Birmingham's Religions and Development Programme and as a Research and Policy Analyst with Islamic Relief.

Memo by Monika Krause
Monika Krause is a Ph.D. Candidate in Sociology at New York University. She studied at the Universities of Munich and Cambridge and holds an M.Sc. in Political Sociology from the London School of Economics. Her dissertation examines how humanitarian NGOs decide where to do what and how much based on in-depth interviews with heads of operations, desk officers, and country directors.

Memo by Giovanni Mantilla
Giovanni Mantilla is a PhD student in Political Science at the University of Minnesota. His research focuses, among others, on the emergence and impact of international human rights norms and standards on non-state actors such as corporations and armed groups, framed around the broader question of change in the international system. He also has a developing research interest in humanitarianism and in LGBT rights. Giovanni has professional experience in the area of business, human rights, conflict and peacebuilding, particularly in Colombia. He holds B.A. degrees in Political Science and in Languages and Sociocultural Studies from the Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia. Recent publications include a chapter in the volume Embedding Human Rights in Business Practice II (New York: United Nations Global Compact and the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, 2008.)

Memo by James McKee
James McKee is a 3rd year PhD candidate at the University of Toronto and a Massey College Fellow. His fields of study are International Relations and Political Theory, and his doctoral research focuses on the 17th century Dutch colonial period. More specifically this project explores the relationship between emergent religious, commercial and colonial identities and traces their effect on humanitarian practice using two broad case studies.

Beginning with the Dutch experience on the North American continent at the beginning of the 1600s and ending the century in the Dutch East Indies, this project employs a deep historical reading of contemporary discourse on the links between trade, empire, and humanitarian concern to suggest that what counted as legitimate humanitarian sensibility and practice was radically transformed in a very short period of time. Set against a broader era of European colonial expansion - and justification - the project begins with the failure of the Dutch settlements at New Amsterdam (later New York), and contrasts this era with the longevity and ‘normality’ of colonial rule of the Dutch East Indies trading empire.

James holds an MA in Political Theory and International Relations from the University of Toronto, and a BA in Political Studies from Queen’s University.

Memo by Joelle Moufarrege

Memo by Andrea Paras
Andrea Paras is a 4th year PhD candidate at the University of Toronto. Her dissertation, entitled "A Genealogy of Humanitarianism: Power, Statehood, and Moral Obligation," tries to understand contemporary ideas about humanitarianism by looking to its past. Its main theoretical contribution is to account for how moral obligations are historically constructed and contingent, the relationship between moral obligation and identity formation, and the mechanisms of productive power that operate therein. Using a genealogical method, the dissertation looks at three historical cases that represent different discourses of moral obligation: French Huguenot refugees in England in the 16th century, the 19th century British abolitionist movement, and the split in the Red Cross that led to the formation of MSF in the 1970s. Andrea has an MA in History and International Relations from the University of Toronto, and a BA in History from the University of British Columbia.

Memo by Sarah Sabry (forthcoming)
Sarah Sabry is a PhD candidate at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. Her research is about urban poverty and the role of non-state actors in targeted poverty reduction. She also works with the Ford Foundation in Egypt as their Community Youth Development Consultant. Previously, she held a number of management positions in the IT sector, was chairwoman of a local Egyptian NGO working on poverty reduction and helped establish the Community Service programme at the American University in Cairo. Her research interests include: urban poverty, social policy, youth, NGOs, faith-based providers and the role of the state.  

Memo by Janice Stein
Janice Gross Stein is the Belzberg Professor of Conflict Management in the Department of Political Science and the Director of the Munk Centre for International Studies at the University of Toronto. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and a member of the Order of Canada and the Order of Ontario. Her most recent publications include Networks of Knowledge: Innovation in International Learning (2000); The Cult of Efficiency (2001); and Street Protests and Fantasy Parks (2001). She is a contributor to Canada by Picasso (2006) and the co-author of The Unexpected War: Canada in Kandahar (2007).  She was the Massey Lecturer in 2001 and a Trudeau Fellow. She was awarded the Molson Prize by the Canada Council for an outstanding contribution by a social scientist to public debate. She is an Honorary Foreign Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2006, she was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Laws by the University of Alberta and the University of Cape Breton.

Memo by Jennifer Telesca
Jennifer E. Telesca is a doctoral student at the Institute for Law & Society at New York University.  Research interests include legal anthropology and the media representations of human rights and humanitarian interventions.  Prior to joining NYU, she graduated Phi Beta Kappa with departmental honors in history from the University of Richmond.   She holds with distinction a Master of Arts in Cultural Anthropology and a Graduate Certificate in Women’s Studies from the University of Connecticut (Storrs).  Her professional experience includes posts in the arts (Museum of Modern Art, New York and The Parrish Art Museum, Southampton, NY), international development (Ashoka, an NGO supporting social entrepreneurs), academic publishing (Kumarian Press), and an anthropology field school (OSEA-CITE).  She has lived in Mexico and in the Andean and Southern Cone Regions of Latin America.   

Memo by Laura Thaut
Laura Thaut is a PhD student in Political Science at the University of Minnesota.  Specializing in comparative politics and international relations, her research focuses primarily on the politics of international migration, as well as the socio-economic and political implications of international migration for sending and receiving countries. Her publications include a forthcoming article in the International Migration journal.  Concurrently, Laura has a burgeoning research interest in the study of faith-based humanitarian agencies, exploring the variations in how faith informs the humanitarianism of Christian and Islamic faith-based agencies.  She received her B.A. in political science from Whitworth University and was a 2005-2006 U.S. Fulbright Fellow in Lithuania.

Memo by Jonathan Van Antwerpen (forthcoming)
Jonathan VanAntwerpen is a research fellow at the Social Science Research Council, program officer for Council projects on Religion and the Public Sphere, and a fellow at the NYU Institute for Public Knowledge. Currently completing his Ph.D. in the department of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley, he received a B.A. from Calvin College, and an M.A. in philosophy from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is editor of The Immanent Frame, an SSRC blog on secularism, religion, and the public sphere.

Memo by Wendy Weber (forthcoming)
Wendy Weber teaches in the Political Science department at Macalester College where her courses include Global Governance, Gender and Global Politics, and Humanitarianism.  Her general interests are in changing patterns of governance, especially in the areas of human rights and humanitarianism.  This summer she is working on a project focused on the role of humanitarian aid in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Memo by Raymond Wung
Raymond Wung is an MA student in International Human Rights Law at the American University in Cairo currently in his thesis research on Child Soldiers in Africa, Conscription, Criminal Responsibility and Rehabilitation: A Relativist View. He received an LLB in Cameroon, served as teaching assistant and militated in secular and Christian outreach initiatives. He has written short papers on human rights issues in Cameroon. Ray also starts the Forced Migration program at AUC next Fall where he plans to research on the topic, Church Aid, Refugees and IDPs in Complex Societies as an extension to his present contribution on Pentecostal Humanitarianism in the Cameroons and Nigeria: Validating the ‘Foolishness’. His PhD interests are in international humanitarian law and Post-Conflict Transformation in Africa.   

Memo by Ismail Yaylaci
I am a first-year Phd student in political science. I studied Political Science and Sociology in the undergraduate, and did my MA in political science, both at Bogazici University, in Istanbul. In my MA thesis, I made an critical analysis of democracy promotion efforts in the Middle East in the particular case of Egypt. I am interested in IR theory, social and political theory, social movements, Middle East politics/history/society, Islam and politics, Islamic political thought, and democratization. I am also working together with a colleague on an edited volume titled “Civilizations and World Orders” that is forthcoming from Rowman and Littlefield Publishers.