Robert Hefner is Professor of anthropology and Director of the Institute on Culture, Religion, and World Affairs (CURA) at Boston University.  At CURA, he has directed the program on Islam and civil society since 1991; coordinated interdisciplinary research and public policy programs on religion, pluralism, and world affairs; and is currently involved in comparative research on citizenship and civic inculturation in Muslim-majority and Christian/post-Christian societies. His recent research projects have examined Evangelicalism and Pentecostalism in the Second Generation (2010-2012; co-directed with Peter L. Berger); Religion, Conflict, and Civic Education in Deep Plural Societies (2011-2012; co-directed with Adam Seligman); and Shari`a Law and Citizenship (2008-2010).  Hefner has authored or edited sixteen books, the most recent of which is Shari‘a Politics:  Islamic Law and Society in the Modern World (Indiana 2011).

Canon Angus Ritchie is Director of the Contextual Theology Centre at the Royal Foundation of St. Katharine in East London.  With Vincent Rougeau, Ritchie has established Just Communities—a partnership between the Centre, Notre Dame and Oxford, generating internships, seminars and publications on Christian engagement in community organizing.  He recently completed his D.Phil. in Philosophy at Magdalen College, Oxford, and his thesis From Goodness to God:  The Theistic Implications of our Moral Commitments is being published by Oxford University Press.  In June 2011, he was appointed Honorary Chaplain for Social Justice at Keble College, Oxford and a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of East London.

Vincent D. Rougeau is Dean of Boston College Law School. He previously served as a professor of law at Notre Dame, and served as their Associate Dean for Academic Affairs from 1999-2002.  An expert in Catholic social thought, Dean Rougeau’s most recent book, Christians in the American Empire:  Faith and Citizenship in the New World Order, was released in 2008 by Oxford University Press.  Using Catholic social teaching and its secular philosophical antecedents as his point of departure, Dean Rougeau explores how key assumptions underlying Catholic thinking diverge from many of the ideas animating American law and public policy in areas like poverty relief, immigration, and redress for racial discrimination.  His current research and writing consider the relationship between religious identity and notions of democratic citizenship and membership in an increasingly mobile global order.  He is Senior Fellow at the Contextual Theology Centre in London and an elected member of the American Law Institute.