About the speakers:

Ceren Lord is a Post-Doctoral Research Officer in Middle East Studies at the School of Interdisciplinary Area Studies at the University of Oxford. She completed her PhD in May 2015 at the London School of Economics, Government Department, focusing on the role of the state and the ulema in the rise of political Islam in Turkey. Her book based on her PhD entitled Religious Politics in Turkey: From the Birth of the Republic to the AKP, is forthcoming later this year from Cambridge University Press. She holds a master’s degree from Oxford University (St Antony’s College) in Modern Middle Eastern Studies. Alongside her academic career, Ceren previously worked in finance as an economist focusing on Europe and the Middle East and Africa. She is a regular contributor to the Economist Intelligence Unit, Associate Editor at the British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies and the lead editor for the British Institute at Ankara Contemporary Turkey series published in collaboration with I.B. Tauris. Her research interests include religio-political movements; secularism and state-religion relations; the role of the ulema and changing nature of Islamic authority; comparative democratisation and the dynamics of authoritarian persistence; sectarianism and ethno-religious mobilisation in Turkey and the Middle East. Ceren’s current research on Alevis in Turkey is funded by the Sasakawa Peace Foundation.

Alexandre Toumarkine is a Professor for Contemporary Turkish History and Society in the Department of Eurasian Studies at the National Institute for Oriental Languages and Civilizations (INALCO – Paris). He’s a member of the Research Center on Mediterranean Middle East (CERMOM). Between 2011 and 2017, he was a senior research fellow at the Orient-Institut Istanbul (OII) – Max Weber Stiftung ; and from 2005 to 2010, a Scientific Director of the French Institute for Anatolian Studies  (IFEA-Istanbul). During his stay at the Orient Institut Istanbul, he headed the research program (ANR-DFG) on “New Religiosities in Turkey: Reenchantment in a Secularized Muslim Country?” ( NEORELIGITUR)

Katja Triplett holds a doctorate in the Study of Religions, Japanese Linguistics and Anthropology from Marburg University, and is currently affiliated as an Academic Visitor to the Oriental Institute, University of Oxford. She is Senior Fellow at the Center for Modern East Asian Studies (CeMEAS), University of Göttingen, and is associated with the Humanities Centre for Advanced Studies "Multiple Secularities – Beyond the West, Beyond Modernities" at the University of Leipzig. From 2012 to 2016 she was professor for the Study of Religions at the Department of East Asian Studies, University of Göttingen. In her current research she explores “Japan in the Middle East.” Triplett has published widely on topics relating to Japanese Buddhism.