Konstantin Ash (Ph.D. University of California – San Diego) is an assistant professor at the School of Politics, Security, and International Affairs, specializing in comparative politics and international relations. Specifically, he focuses on explaining participation in political conflict and violence, ranging from protests and riots to insurgencies and terrorism and using these findings to make group-level quantitative inferences, particularly with respect to conflict in the Middle East, North Africa and the broader Islamic World.

Ulaş Bağcı (Ph.D. University of Nottingham -UK) is a faculty member at the Center for Research in Computer Vision (CRCV), and the Assistant Professor in University of Central Florida (UCF). His research interests are image processing and statistical machine learning and their applications in biomedical and clinical imaging. Previously, Prof. Bagci was a staff scientist and the lab manager at the NIH’s Center for Infectious Disease Imaging (CIDI) Lab, department of Radiology and Imaging Sciences (RAD&IS).

David Dumke is the Director of the Office of Global Perspectives at UCF. He writes regular columns for both Al Ahram Weekly and Saudi Gazette. Dumke has worked on regional projects in a number of fields, including politics, business and academia. He also brings a background in entrepreneurship, having established numerous firms serving specific needs, whose clients, partners, and collaborators include governments, NGOs, business organizations and private-sector entities.

Tyler Fisher (Ph.D. Oxford University, UK) is an Associate Professor at the University of Central Florida. Upon completing a BA in English Literature and a second BA in Spanish at the University of Central Florida in 2003, Tyler Fisher became the first student from UCF to attain a Rhodes Scholarship. This enabled him to pursue graduate studies at Magdalen College, University of Oxford, where his Master’s and doctoral research concerned metaliterary devices and theology in late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century Spanish poetry. He was subsequently Queen Sofía Research Fellow and Lecturer in Spanish at Exeter College, Oxford (2008-2011).

Haidar Khezri (Ph.D. Damascus University, Syria) is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Modern Languages & Literatures at the University of Central Florida. Prior to UCF, Khezri was an Assistant Professor at Mardin Artuklu University in Turkey (2011-2014), and a Visiting Assistant Professor at Indiana University – Bloomington (2014-2018). Through the academic year 2018 – 2019, Khezri was a Visiting Faculty Member and Resident Senior Fellow at UCF’s KPSP. He is currently co-editing The Walter De Gruyter Companion to Kurdish Literature (Berlin: Walter De Gruyter Press 2021).

Hakan Özoğlu (Ph.D. Ohio State University) has focused in his previous research on Kurdish Nationalism in the Ottoman Empire. His book was titled Kurdish Notables and the Ottoman State. The Turkish edition of the book came out in 2004. Özoğlu’s main aim in this project was to understand the process of identity formation and emergence of nationalism. His research interests include the power struggle in modern Turkish Republic after WWI and US involvement of the Middle East through Turkey after the Great War.

Güneş Murat Tezcür (Ph.D., University of Michigan, 2005), the Jalal Talabani Chair and a Professor at the School of Politics, Security, and International Affairs. He is a social scientist studying political violence, identity, and movements. His articles have appeared or are forthcoming in many different scholarly journals such as American Political Science Review, Comparative Politics, Foreign Policy Analysis, International Studies Perspectives and Journal of Peace Research. His research has been supported by grants from the National Science Foundation, the United States Institute of Peace, and the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation. He conducts his research in Kurdish, Persian, and Turkish.

Tutku Ayhan is a doctoral candidate in the Security Studies Program at the School of Politics, Security, and International Affairs at the University of Central Florida. Prior to UCF, she pursued graduate degrees at Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales and Boğaziçi University. Her dissertation focuses on the effects of genocidal violence on gender relations among the Yazidis.

Sara Belligoni is a doctoral candidate in Security Studies at the School of Politics, Security, and International Affairs at the University of Central Florida. Her research interests lie in the intersection between human security, emergency management, and governance. Sara’s dissertation focuses on the role of institutional arrangements in shaping multi-actors coordination in complex emergencies. Prior to joining UCF, Sara was a Trainee under the U.S. Department of State Exchange Visitor Program. She pursued a Certificate in Global Affairs at the New York University, M.A. cum laude in International Relations and B.A. in Political Science both at Università degli Studi Roma Tre in her home country, Italy.

Doreen Horschig is a doctoral candidate in Security Studies at the School of Politics, Security, and International Affairs at the University of Central Florida. Her areas of research are Nuclear Security and Weapons of Mass Destruction. Prior to her PhD studies, she pursued a Master’s degree in International Relations at New York University as a DAAD Fellow (German Academic Exchange Service). Doreen’s dissertation work discusses Israeli public opinion on the use of nuclear weapons.