The Culture of Encounter Project - Georgetown University

Monica Attias is the coordinator of the Sant’Egidio Humanitarian Corridors Program from Afghanistan and Cyprus as well as the Anti-Trafficking Project, which caters to victims of human trafficking. She has been a member of the Sant'Egidio Community since 1978 and has volunteered in the field of research on migration and asylum since 2000, taking part in many international conferences. Attias has a long experience in ecumenical relations with the Methodist Churches and the Anglican Communion worldwide and she is a scholar in the contemporary ecumenical history of the Witnesses of the Faith (Vatican New Martyrs’ Commission, 2000). She is the author of several articles and of the book Racconti di pace in Oceania. La vicenda dei sette martiri anglicani della Melanesian Brotherhood (Urbaniana University Press, 2012). Since 2008, she has worked at the Italian National Institute of Statistics (ISTAT) as a senior researcher in international relations and cooperation. Attias is a member of the Working Group on Displaced Persons and Hospitality to the Stranger, part of the Culture of Encounter Project.

José Casanova is one of the world's leading scholars in the sociology of religion and a senior fellow at the Berkley Center, where his work focuses on globalization, religions, and secularization. He is also professor emeritus at Georgetown University, where he previously taught in the Department of Sociology and the Department of Theology and Religious Studies. During 2017 he was the Kluge Chair in Countries and Cultures of the North at the U.S. Library of Congress' John W. Kluge Center, where he worked on a book manuscript on Early Modern Globalization through a Jesuit Prism. He has published works on a broad range of subjects, including religion and globalization, migration and religious pluralism, transnational religions, and sociological theory. His best-known work, Public Religions in the Modern World (University of Chicago Press, 1994), has become a modern classic in the field and has been translated into several languages, including Japanese, Arabic, and Turkish. In 2012, Casanova was awarded the Theology Prize from the Salzburger Hochschulwochen in recognition of his life-long achievement in the field of theology. Casanova is a member of the Working Group on Displaced Persons and Hospitality to the Stranger, part of the Culture of Encounter Project.

Jocelyne Cesari holds the Chair of Religion and Politics and is director of research at the Edward Cadbury Centre for the Public Understanding of Religion at the University of Birmingham, United Kingdom; she is a senior fellow at the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs at Georgetown University, where she previously was an associate professor of the practice of religion, peace, and conflict resolution in the Department of Government. She is the T. J. Dermot Dunphy Visiting Professor of Religion, Violence, and Peacebuilding at Harvard Divinity School. Former president of the European Academy of Religion, her work on religion, political violence, and conflict resolution has garnered recognition and awards from numerous international organizations such as the Carnegie Council for Ethics and International Affairs and the Royal Society for Arts in the United Kingdom. She is a Professorial Fellow at Australian Catholic University's Institute for Religion, Politics and Society. She teaches on contemporary Islam and politics at Harvard Divinity School and directs the Islam in the West program. Cesari is a member of the Working Group on Displaced Persons and Hospitality to the Stranger, part of the Culture of Encounter Project.

Affan Cheema is the director of international programs at Islamic Relief Worldwide, one of the largest Muslim faith agencies in the world. He is an experienced leader with 27 years of working in the international aid sector on poverty eradication in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. He has worked in fast-onset emergencies, protracted crises, and development environments. Cheema completed his bachelor’s degree in economics and geography from the University of London (School of Oriental and African Studies) and his MSc in development administration and planning from the University of Bristol. He is PRINCE2 qualified, is a keen sportsman, and recently co-edited a book entitled Islam and International Development: Insights for working with Muslim Communities (Practical Action Publishing, 2020). Cheema is a member of the Working Group on Displaced Persons and Hospitality to the Stranger, part of the Culture of Encounter Project.

Elizabeth Ferris is a research professor at and director of the Institute for the Study of International Migration at Georgetown University. In 2016, she also served as the senior advisor to the UN General Assembly’s Summit for Refugees and Migrants in New York and from 2020 to 2021 as an expert advisor to the UN Secretary-General's High-Level Panel on Internal Displacement. Prior to joining Georgetown, she was a senior fellow and co-director of the Brookings-LSE Project on Internal Displacement and spent 20 years working in the field of humanitarian assistance, most recently in Geneva, Switzerland, at the World Council of Churches. She has written extensively on humanitarian issues and has worked on issues around disaster displacement and climate migration since 2010. Her latest book—Refugees, Migration and Global Governance: Negotiating the Global Compacts (with Katharine Donato)—was published by Routledge in July 2019. Ferris is a member of the Working Group on Displaced Persons and Hospitality to the Stranger, part of the Culture of Encounter Project.

Manzoor Hasan, OBE, is the founding executive director of the Centre for Peace and Justice at BRAC University in Bangladesh and was instrumental in establishing the BRAC Institute of Governance and Development in 2005. He is a lawyer cum economist trained at the Lincoln’s Inn and the London School of Economics and Political Science. He is known for his multidisciplinary contributions to development, governance, and justice in Bangladesh. Previously he was the deputy executive director, BRAC; regional director (Asia-Pacific) of Transparency International in Berlin, Germany; and the founding executive director of Transparency International Bangladesh (1996 to 2003). Queen Elizabeth II awarded him the Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire in 2003 for his promotion of transparency in Bangladesh. Hasan is a member of the Working Group on Displaced Persons and Hospitality to the Stranger, part of the Culture of Encounter Project.

Rev. David Hollenbach, S.J., is the Pedro Arrupe Distinguished Research Professor in the Walsh School of Foreign Service; a senior fellow at the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs; and an affiliated professor in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at Georgetown University. His teaching and research deal with human rights, religious and ethical responses to humanitarian crises, and religion in political life from the standpoint of Catholic social thought, theology, and the social sciences. His books include Human Rights in a Divided World: Catholicism as a Living Tradition (2024), Humanity in Crisis: Ethical and Religious Response to Refugees (2019), Driven from Home: Protecting the Rights of Forced Migrants (2010) The Global Face of Public Faith: Politics, Human Rights, and Christian Ethics (2003), and The Common Good and Christian Ethics (2002). He has taught often at Hekima University College in Nairobi, Kenya, and he collaborates with Jesuit Refugee Service. From 2020 to 2022 he is a distinguished research associate with the Kellogg Institute for International Studies at the University of Notre Dame. Hollenbach is also a research associate with the Jesuit Center for Theological Reflection in Zambia. Hollenbach is a member of the Working Group on Displaced Persons and Hospitality to the Stranger, part of the Culture of Encounter Project.

Archimandrite Cyril Hovorun is a professor of ecclesiology, international relations, and ecumenism at Sankt Ignatios College, University College Stockholm, and a director of the Huffington Ecumenical Institute at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. A graduate of the Theological Academy in Kyiv and National University in Athens, he completed his doctoral studies at Durham University under the supervision of Fr. Andrew Louth. He was a chairman of the Department for External Church Relations of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, first deputy chairman of the Educational Committee of the Russian Orthodox Church, and later a research fellow at Yale and Columbia Universities, visiting professor at the University of Münster in Germany. He is an international fellow at Chester Ronning Centre for the study of religion and public life at the University of Alberta in Canada and an invited professor at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome. Hovorun is a member of the Working Group on Displaced Persons and Hospitality to the Stranger, part of the Culture of Encounter Project.

Michael Kessler is executive director of the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs at Georgetown University, a professor of the practice of moral and political theory in the Department of Government, and an adjunct professor of law at Georgetown Law. Kessler’s research and writing focus on theology, philosophical and religious ethics, and social, political, and legal theory. He is interested in problems of law and religion, both globally and in the U.S. constitutional context. Kessler is the author of several edited volumes, including The Oxford Handbook of Political Theology, co-edited with Shaun Casey (Oxford University Press, forthcoming); Political Theology for a Plural Age (Oxford University Press, 2013); and Mystics: Presence and Aporia, co-edited with Christian Sheppard (University of Chicago Press, 2003). He also wrote “Engaging Religion in U.S. Foreign Affairs,” a chapter in the Companion to Religion and Politics in the United States (Wiley-Blackwell, 2016). Kessler is a member of the Working Group on Displaced Persons and Hospitality to the Stranger, part of the Culture of Encounter Project.

Cynthia Juárez Lange is senior counsel at Fragomen and a senior fellow at Brigham Young University's International Center for Law and Religion Studies, representing the center and Latter-day Saint Charities at the Organization of American States in Washington, DC. She has almost 40 years of experience in international immigration law in leadership, strategic growth, and advising international organizations on global mobility programs. She began her career at the U.S. Department of Justice as a United Immigration and Naturalization Service trial attorney in the Attorney General Honors Program. Cynthia was also a long-time adjunct professor at Southwestern University School of Law, where she taught for 18 years. She is a thought leader in the industry and dedicates much of her time to pro bono work. She has been a board member of both the National Immigration Law Center (NILC), the nation’s leading organization dedicated to defending and advancing the rights of low-income immigrants in the United States, and of the NILC Immigrant Justice Fund. Lange is a member of the Working Group on Displaced Persons and Hospitality to the Stranger, part of the Culture of Encounter Project.

Katherine Marshall, a senior fellow at Georgetown University’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs, leads the center’s work on religion and global development. She is also a professor of the practice of development, conflict, and religion in the Walsh School of Foreign Service, teaching diverse courses on the ethics of development work and mentoring students at many levels. She helped to create and now serves as the executive director of the World Faiths Development Dialogue, an NGO that works to enhance bridges between different sectors and institutions. In September 2022, she was appointed as a member of the Advisory Committee on Voluntary Foreign Aid at the U.S. Agency for International Development. Marshall has five decades of experience on a variety of development issues in Africa, Latin America, East Asia, and the Middle East, particularly those facing the world’s poorest countries; one way she shares her expertise is through her blog Faith in Action. She was a World Bank officer from 1971 to 2006, and she led the World Bank’s faith and ethics initiative between 2000 and 2006. Marshall is a member of the Working Group on Child Rights and Family Values and the Working Group on Displaced Persons and Hospitality to the Stranger, both part of the Culture of Encounter Project.

Ruth W. Messinger is the global ambassador of American Jewish World Service (AJWS), the world’s leading Jewish organization working to end poverty and realize human rights in the developing world. She previously served as AJWS president from 1998 to July 2016, coming to the organization following a 20-year career in public service in New York City. Messinger is a member of the Working Group on Child Rights and Family Values and the Working Group on Displaced Persons and Hospitality to the Stranger, both part of the Culture of Encounter Project.

Joan Rosenhauer is the president of Jesuit Refugee Service USA (JRS). She is a member of JRS’s global leadership team advancing JRS’s mission to accompany, serve, and advocate for displaced people in 58 countries. This includes supporting global education, livelihoods, reconciliation, and psychosocial support programming. She also leads JRS’s work in the United States, providing chaplains in five centers where people are detained by the U.S. government and providing legal and psychosocial support in El Paso, Texas, and Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, in collaboration with JRS Mexico. JRS USA also sponsors a network of volunteers to support newcomers in cities across the United States. Rosenhauer served as executive vice president for U.S. operations of Catholic Relief Services and was associate director of the Department of Justice, Peace, and Human Development at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. Rosenhauer has a bachelor’s degree in social work from the University of Iowa and a master’s degree in public policy management from the University of Maryland. Rosenhauer is a member of the Working Group on Displaced Persons and Hospitality to the Stranger, part of the Culture of Encounter Project.