Team

Saskia Schäfer’s research focuses on politics and religion. She has held post-doctoral positions at the Weatherhead East Asian Institute and the Institute for Religion, Culture, and Public Life, both at Columbia University, and at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. She received her Dr. phil. in political science from the Otto-Suhr-Institute of Political Science at Freie Universität Berlin in collaboration with the multidisciplinary Graduate School “Muslim Cultures and Societies.” She is currently preparing a manuscript on religious freedom and orthodoxy in Indonesia.

image © Mareike Stoll

Mutmainna Syam holds a M.A. in International Relations from Gazi University, Turkey. While studying in Turkey, she also worked for the Indonesian Embassy in Ankara as a Political Analyst Assistant. She is currently conducting research about religious authorities and democracy in the education sector in Indonesia.

Dissa Julia Paputungan received her M.A. in political science from Osnabrück University. Her research interests include public policy, civil society, and the use of social media. She is currently conducting her PhD research about intolerance and civil society organizations in the education sector in Indonesia. Her PhD research is funded by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation.

Ela Ezgi Benli studies Global History (M.A.) at Humboldt Universität zu Berlin. Her main interest is women’s rights activism in Muslim countries and her regional foci are the Middle East, East Africa, and Indonesia. In addition to her studies, Ela pursues anti-racism work and is active in Kurdish and Turkish women’s rights organizations.

Bahar Çatı studies Social Sciences at the Humboldt University in Berlin. Her academic focus is on global feminist movements and Islamism. She also works on nation-building in the Middle East, especially in Turkey and Kurdistan, and contributions made to nation-building by the respective diasporas in Germany. She has been a Rosa Luxemburg Foundation fellow since 2020.

Devin Can Atakan studies American Culture and Literature (B.A.) at Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey. On the post-graduate level, he plans to focus on Literary Urban Studies.

Leona Pröpper works as a One World Promoter with the human rights organization Watch Indonesia!. She collaborates with SIDIT on urban development and civil society. 

Zeynep Balcioglu works as a postdoctoral researcher at Leiden University. She earned her Ph.D. from the Department of Political Science at Northeastern University in 2021. Her research focuses on multi-level governance structures, social services, and assistance provisions for refugees and immigrants, local bureaucracies, and international humanitarian organizations. She holds a BA in Political Science and International Relations from Boğaziçi University and an MA in Global Ethics and Human Values from King’s College London. After joining the team in Berlin for a post-doctoral fellowship in 2022, she continues to collaborate with SIDIT on a project on notions of democracy among elites in Turkey.