David R. Ambaras is associate professor of history at North Carolina State University. He specializes in Japanese urban social and cultural history and the history of imperialism. He is the author of Bad Youth: Juvenile Delinquency and the Politics of Everyday Life in Modern Japan (University of California Press, 2006), and is currently working on a book-length project entitled “Down and Out From Taipei to Dairen: Policing Class, Race, and Space in the Japanese Colonies.” He has also done extensive work on Christian missionaries in Japan.

Beth Baron is Professor of Middle East History at the City College and Graduate Center, City University of New York. Her publications include: Egypt as a Woman: Nationalisms, Gender, and Politics (University of California Press, 2005) and The Women's Awakening in Egypt: Culture, Society, and the Press (Yale University Press, 1994). She edited Iran and Beyond: Essays in Middle Eastern History in Honor of Nikki R. Keddie (Mazda, 2000), with Rudi Matthee, and Women in Middle Eastern History: Shifting Boundaries in Sex and Gender (Yale University Press, 1991) with Nikki R. Keddie. Baron co-founded and now co-directs the Middle East and Middle Eastern American Center at the CUNY Graduate Center. Baron has received fellowships from the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Ford Foundation.

Eleanor Abdella Doumato directed a collaborative research project on education in the Middle East, which will be published under the title, “Tailor-Made Islam: Religion, Identity and Nation in Middle Eastern Schoolbooks," for which she contributed a chapter on religion textbooks in Saudi Arabia. She is the author of Getting God's Ear: Women, Islam and Healing in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf. (Columbia University Press, 2000), which is an historical investigation into the influence of Wahhabism on the persistence of gender segregation. Dr. Doumato has also published two edited volumes, Women and Globalization in the Arab Middle East: Gender, Economy, and Society, published by Lynne Rienner in 2003, co-edited with Marsha Posusney, and “Missionary Transformations: Gender, Culture and Identity in the Middle East,” published as a special edited issue of the journal Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations, Vol. 13, no. 4 (Fall, 2002). She is a past-president of the Association for Middle East Women’s Studies, and was the editor for ten years of the professional newsletter, Middle East Women’s Studies Review. She is an associate editor for Hawwa: Journal of Islam and Women in the Middle East, and a member of the editorial advisory board of the Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies. She has taught at the University of Rhode Island, the US Naval War College, and Brown University, and is a Visiting Fellow at the Watson Institute for International Studies, Brown University.

Ellen Fleischmann is Associate Professor of History at the University of Dayton. She received her PhD from Georgetown University in 1996. Her research interests include history of women and gender in the Middle East, women’s movements in the Mashriq, Palestinian history, and history of missions in the Middle East. Her book, The Nation and Its ‘New’ Women: the Palestinian Women’s Movement, 1920-1948, was published by University of California Press in 2003. Other publications have appeared in Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations, Journal of Palestine Studies, History Workshop Journal, Jerusalem Quarterly File, Women’s History Review and several edited volumes, the most recent of which is “Evangelization or Education: American Protestant Missionaries, the American Board, and the Girls and Women of Syria (1830-1910),” in New Faith in Ancient Lands: Western Missions in the Middle East in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries, edited by Heleen Van der Murre (Leiden: Brill, 2006). Her current project is a book tentatively entitled “Under an American Roof:” the Encounter Among Women of Greater Syria and American Protestant Missionaries, c. 1840-1945.

Akram Khater is Associate Professor of History at North Carolina State University, and Director of the Middle East Studies Program. His books include Inventing Home: Emigration, Gender and the Making of a Lebanese Middle Class, 1861-1921, and A History of the Middle East: A Sourcebook for the History of the Middle East. Khater has received fellowships from the National Humanities Center, American Philosophical Society, National Endowment for the Humanities, Fulbright Foundation, and the Council of American Overseas Research Centers. His current project about missionaries focuses on the interaction between Latin missionaries and local Christians in 18th century Bilad al-Sham. He is working on a book-length manuscript on Hindiyya al-'Ujaimi, a Maronite visionary nun of the 18th century. His other project focuses on issues of immigration, gender and class across the 20th century.

Christine Lindner is currently a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Edinburgh (Scotland). The title of her thesis is ‘Exploring the Field: American Protestant Missionaries and the Emerging Protestant Circle in Beirut and its Hinterlands, 1823 to 1860’. Originally from New York, Christine received her B.A. in History from Gordon College (Massachusetts, USA), and a M.A. in Middle East Women’s Studies from the University of Durham (England). Her research interests include the influences of race and ethnicity on the development of American ‘white women’s’ identities, specifically the interactions with and perceptions of ‘Arab women’. In addition, her research explores the affects of colonisation and cultural exchange on academic discourses, with a specific focus upon the works and ideologies of Pierre Bourdieu. She is also interested in Christian women’s theology and spirituality. She has presented papers exploring these topics at various conferences including MESA Annual Conference (2006) and BRISMES Annual Conference (2005).    

Renate Lunde is a doctoral candidate at the History Department at the University of Bergen (Norway) working with Dr. Anders Bjørkelo and Dr. Inger Marie Okkenhaug. Her scholarly work focuses on Egypt and the Sudan, women and children, education, welfare and development work. She has published several articles including "Building Bonny Babies: Missionary Maternity and Infant Welfare Work in Cairo, 1920-1950" (forthcoming in Nefissa Naguib and Inger Marie Okkenhaug (ed.) Welfare, gender and practice: 1800 - 2000, 200 years of entrepreneurship. Brill, 2007), “Mother and Child Centres in Egypt: Mission, Charity and Colonialism 1920-2000” (in Babylon, Norwegian Journal on the Middle East and North-Africa, No. 1, 2006). and ”Muslim girls' education in Northern Sudan - consequences of a cultural encounter”, (in REPLIKK, Norwegian Journal for the humanities and social sciences. No. 14, Spring 2002).

Michael Marten. Following a degree in Divinity (Universities of Aberdeen & Erlangen), Marten worked in various development and political NGO contexts in Britain and the Middle East before beginning doctoral studies at the University of Edinburgh’s Department of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies.  A revised and expanded version of the thesis was published by I.B. Tauris (London, 2005: Attempting to bring the gospel home: Scottish missions to Palestine 1839-1917).  He taught Middle East politics at SOAS, University of London, from 2004-2005.  Current areas of interest include missions and gender, capitalism, postcolonialism, conflict resolution and religious ideology in political decision-making. For more information you can visit his website.

Aleksandra Majstorac Kobiljski is a PhD candidate in History at The Graduate Center CUNY, New York. She completed her BA at the Department of Oriental Studies at the University of Belgrade, Serbia. She obtained her MA from the Central European University, Hungary. Her current research focuses on two missionary universities, one in Beirut and the other in Kyoto as a sites of rethinking the relationship between the Middle East and Japan in late 19th and early 20th century. Her other research interest include missionary architecture and material culture as well as coeducation and gender dynamics in the mission field.

Rudi Mathee Professor of Middle Eastern History at the University of Delaware.  BA and MA in Arabic and Persian Language and Literature from the University of Utrecht, The Netherlands; study in Iran, 1976-77, and Egypt, 1981-83; Ph.D. in Islamic Studies from UCLA, 1991. Taught at the University of Denver, 1991-93, and since 1993 at the University of Delaware. Author of The Politics of Trade in Safavid Iran: Silk for Silver, 1600-1730 (Cambridge University Press, 1999) (recipient of prize for best non-Persian language book on Iranian history, 1999, awarded by the Iranian Ministry of Culture; honorable mention for best book on the Middle East published in Britain, 1999). Author of The Pursuit of Pleasure: Drugs and Stimulants in Iranian History, 1500-1900 (Princeton University Press, 2005) (recipient of the 2006 Albert Hourani Prize awarded by MESA, and of the Saidi-Sirjani Prize for best book on Iran, awarded by the International Society of Iranian Studies). Co-editor (with Beth Baron), of Iran and Beyond: Essays in Honor of Nikki R. Keddie (Mazda, 2000); and co-editor (with Nikki Keddie), of Iran and the Surrounding World: Interactions in Culture and Cultural Politics (University of Washington Press, 2002). Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, 2002-03. President of the Association of Persian-Speaking Societies, 2003-2005.  

Paul Sedra is Assistant Professor of History at Simon Fraser University. He has taught at Dalhousie University and the University of Toronto, and received his doctorate from New York University in January 2006. His doctoral dissertation examined how ideas about monitorial schooling were developed in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century England, how monitorial methods filtered into Egypt in the mid-nineteenth century and, most importantly, how such methods were appropriated and shaped by Egyptians. Sedra has published articles in Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations, Comparative Studies in South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, the Journal of Religious History, as well as the Middle East working paper series of Yale and Columbia Universities. For more information you can visit his website.

Heather J. Sharkey is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at the University of Pennsylvania.  Before joining the Penn faculty in 2002, she taught at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and Trinity College in Connecticut. She is the author of a book entitled, Living with Colonialism: Nationalism and Culture in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan (University of California Press, 2003).  Her articles have appeared in several edited volumes (among them Globalization and the Muslim World [2004], Literature and Nation in the Middle East [2006], and Muslim-Christian Encounters in Africa [2006]) and in periodicals such as the International Journal of Middle East Studies, the Journal of African History, Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations, and the Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History.  She is currently working on a new book entitled, Americans in Egypt: Missionary Encounters in an Age of Empire.

Nancy L. Stockdale is an assistant professor of Middle Eastern history at the University of North Texas. She received her Ph.D. from the University of California at Santa Barbara in 2000 and was an assistant professor in the history department of the University of Central Florida from 2001-2006. Her publications include articles in the American Journal of Islamic Social Science and Women’s History Review, as well as chapters in New Faith in Ancient Lands (Brill, 2006) and Christian Witness Between Continuity and New Beginnings (LIT-Verlag, 2006). Her first book, Colonial Encounters Among English and Palestinian Women, 1800-1948, will be published by the University Press of Florida in November 2007. A specialist in cross-cultural encounters in the imperial context, Christian missionaries in the era of European New Imperialism, women and gender issues in the Middle East, and the diverse world of late Ottoman and Mandate-era Palestine, she is currently working on a new history of British and American representations of the Middle East in exhibitions and other entertainments over the past 150 years. In her spare time, she enjoys spending time with her husband, playing with her dogs, photography, travel, cinema, and music.

Charlotte van der Leest is a PhD candidate in the Department of History of (World) Christianity at Leiden University (Faculty of Theology). The working title of her dissertation is Evangelical missionaries and Arab Christians in the Holy Land: conversions and conflicts in nineteenth-century Palestine (1846-1879). Prominent themes in this research are the Evangelical movement in nineteenth-century Europe, the influence of the evangelical ideas on the policy and efforts of the CMS missionaries working in Palestine, the establishment of the Protestant bishopric in Jerusalem and its second bishop Samuel Gobat (1846-1879), the reestablishment of the Latin Patriarchate in Jerusalem, and the rivalry between Protestants and Roman Catholics. She has presented papers on these topics at various conferences, including WOCMES (Mainz, 2002), MESA Annual Conference (2005) and New Faith in Ancient Lands (Leiden, 2005).

Michael Zirinsky is professor of history at Boise State University. Educated in the public schools of New York, in the Presbyterian mission-run Community School of Tehran, at Oberlin College (A.B., Government, 1964), Oberlin, Ohio, at the American University (M.A., International Relations), Washington, D.C. and at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (Ph.D., modern history), since 1973 he has taught modern history at Boise State University, Boise, Idaho. Since the 1978-79 revolution his research has focused on western relations with Iran during the twentieth century, particularly the role of American missionaries, the American government and the British government in the emergence of modern Iran. His publications include "Blood, Power, and Hypocrisy: The Murder of Robert Imbrie and American Relations with Pahlavi Iran, 1924," (1986) ; "Imperial Power and Dictatorship: Britain and the Rise of Reza Shah, 1921-1926," (1992); "A Panacea for the Ills of the Country: American Presbyterian Education in Inter-War Iran," (1993); "Render Therefore unto Caesar That Which is Caesar's: American Preshbyterian Educators and Reza Shah," (1993); "American Presbyterian Missionaries at Urmia during the Great War," (2002); "Onward Christian Soldiers: Presbyterian Missionaries and the Ambiguous Origins of American Relations with Iran," (2002); "A Presbyterian Vocation to Reform Gender Relations in Iran: The Career of Annie Stocking Boyce," (2002); and "Riza Shah's 1927-28 Abrogation of Capitulations," (2003).