Andrew Ali Aghapour is a scholar, storyteller, writer, and artistic producer living in Durham, NC. With a Ph.D. in Religious Studies from UNC-Chapel Hill, he worked as the Consulting Scholar of Religion and Science for the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, where he helped develop the “Discovery and Revelation,” exhibition and co-author the exhibit […]

Brook Wilensky-Lanford is a religion writer, editor, and teacher. She is the author of A God-Shaped Nation: Five Hundred Years of Religion in America, forthcoming in June 2026 and Paradise Lust: Searching for the Garden of Eden. Media inquiries should be directed to Deb Seager, Director of Publicity, Grove Atlantic.

Peter Manseau is the founding director of the Center for Understanding Religion in American History at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History and first curator of religion at the Smithsonian Institute, both in Washington, D.C. He can discuss religious art in America and American history.

Philip P. Arnold is president of the Indigenous Values Initiative of the leadership of the Onondaga Nation, the Central Fire (or Capital) of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy (made up of the Seneca, Tuscarora, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida and Mohawk nations). He also leads the The Doctrine of Discovery educational resource, is lovingly maintained by Indigenous Values Initiative […]

Mai Soto is Director of the Institute for Crime and Justice Policy Research at the University of London. Soto’s research focuses on the integrity of global justice systems, with particular emphasis on the death penalty and the legitimacy of courts and police. In July 2024, the UN Human Rights Council appointed Mai as the fourth […]

Ray Takeyh is Hasib J. Sabbagh senior fellow for Middle East studies at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). His areas of specialization are Iran, U.S. foreign policy and the modern Middle East. Prior to joining CFR, he served as senior advisor on Iran at the State Department and was a fellow at Yale University, […]

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) is an independent, bipartisan commission created by the 1998 International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA) that monitors religious freedom violations abroad and makes policy recommendations to the U.S. federal government.

Mehdi Khalaji is a senior fellow at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy specializing in Shiʿa politics and Iran’s religious establishment. 

Benedikt Roemer is a Walter Benjamin Fellow at the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies of the University of Oxford. His research interests include religious diversity in the Middle East, religion and nationalism, diaspora studies, the history and contemporary story of the Iranian Christian community and ethnographic research on religion in Arabic, Persian and […]