Merete Bilde is policy advisor at the European External Action Service (EEAS), the European Union’s foreign and security policy service. She works at the intersection of religion and politics.

Baroness Warsi served as senior Foreign Office minister for faith and communities between 2012 and 2014, when she resigned over her government’s “morally indefensible” policies in Gaza and its role in the Middle East peace process. She can speak on international foreign policy efforts around freedom of religion or belief.

Baroness Berridge chairs the U.K.’s All Party Parliamentary Group on International Religious Freedom, a cross-party group of parliamentarians who champion freedom of religion or belief in government, in parliament, in the media and among the general public.

Sue Breeze leads the Middle East and Asia team in the United Kingdom’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office. She previously worked on freedom of religion or belief, anti-Semitism and post-Holocaust issues.

Nathan C. Walker is president of 1791 Delegates, a public charity named after the year the Bill of Rights was ratified. He regularly writes about freedom of religion or belief in the U.S. and international contexts. Walker is a Unitarian Universalist minister and received his Master of Divinity degree in religion and education from Union Theological […]

Peter Mandaville is a professor of international affairs and a senior fellow at the Ali Vural Ak Center for Global Islamic Studies at George Mason University in Virginia. He writes on political Islam and the origins of mainstream Islamism. As a senior visiting expert at the U.S. Institute of Peace with the religion and inclusive societies […]

Peter Henne is an assistant professor of political science at the University of Vermont. He studies global religious politics, including how states strategically use religion in their foreign policy efforts. Henne previously served as a research associate at Pew Research Center, where he oversaw explorations of global restrictions on religion. 

Michael De Dora is director of the Center for Inquiry’s Office of Public Policy and the organization’s representative to the United Nations. He also serves as president of the United Nations NGO Committee on Freedom of Religion or Belief.

Yale Divinity School professor Tisa Wenger researches the cultural history of the categories of religion and secularism, the politics of religious freedom and the intersections of race and religion in American history.