The ISCZ Team

Mimi Kirk, ISCZ Director / JSCZ Editor. Mimi Kirk is Associate Director and Adjunct Faculty in the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University, Washington D.C. Kirk served as Board President of Americans for Middle East Understanding (AMEU) and as a consultant to al-Shabaka: the Palestine Policy Network. A writer and editor with expertise in Palestine and US foreign policy toward Palestine/Israel, she is co-editor of Palestine and the Palestinians in the 21st Century (Indiana University Press, 2013).
Tony Deik, New Testament Theology and Ethics. A Palestinian Christian from Bethlehem, Palestine, Tony is currently a residential researcher at Tyndale House, Cambridge, where he is finalizing his PhD in New Testament social ethics. He is also a lecturer in biblical studies at Bethlehem Bible College, and a member of the leadership team of the International Fellowship for Mission as Transformation (INFEMIT). He has contributed to several edited volumes including The Religious Other: A Biblical Understanding of Islam, the Qur’an and Muhammad, and Between Religion and Politics: A Christian Perspective on Political Questions from the Middle East.


Atalia Omer, Religion, Conflict, and Peace Studies. A Professor at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies and the Keough School of Global Affairs at the University of Notre Dame, Omer also recently served as a senior fellow and Visiting Professor at Harvard University’s Religion and Public Life program. She earned her PhD in Religion, Ethics, and Politics (2008) from the Committee on the Study of Religion at Harvard University. Her research focuses on religion, violence, and peacebuilding, as well as theories and methods in the study of religion. Omer was awarded an Andrew Carnegie Fellowship in 2017, resulting in Decolonizing Religion and Peacebuilding. Other publications include When Peace is Not Enough: How the Israeli Peace Camp Thinks about Religion, Nationalism, and Justice and Days of Awe: Reimagining Jewishness in Solidarity with Palestinians . She is a co-editor of the Oxford Handbook of Religion, Conflict, and Peacebuilding and a co-editor of Palestine/Israel Review, a journal that de-siloes Palestine Studies and Israel Studies while centering questions of settler-colonialism, power analyses, and decolonial outlooks.
Deanna (Dee) Roberts, Library Manager. Reference and Outreach Librarian, Pitts Theology Library, Candler School of Theology, Emory University, Atlanta, and Palestine Justice Network (PJN) Steering Committee. Deanna’s focus for Palestinian liberation is to introduce more people to the narrative of Palestinians by bringing those voices into the collections within theological libraries in the United States.
Marie-Claire Klassen, Theologian in Residence. Postdoctoral Researcher, Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies, KU Leuven, Belgium. Klassen’s research focuses on the role religion can play in nonviolent resistance and the impact of women in nonviolence resistance movements.
Daoud Kuttab, Media Affairs and Journalism. A Palestinian journalist and media activist, Daoud Kuttab is former Ferris Professor of Journalism at Princeton University. He currently directs the Community Media Network (CMN), dedicated to advancing independent media in the Arab region. CMN administers Radio al Balad in Amman and www.ammannet.net. Kuttab is a regular columnist on Palestinian issues with Al-Monitor, Arab News and his writing appears often in the Washington Post, LA Times, Al Jazeera, New Arab, Newsweek, The New Republic, Religious News Network, and other publications. Born in Jerusalem, Kuttab has worked in journalism since 1980, having received several international awards: the CPJ Freedom of Expression Award, the IPI World Press Freedom Hero, the PEN Club USA Writing Freedom Award, the Leipzig Courage in Freedom Award, the Next Foundation Peace in Journalism Award and Japanese Peace Award for producing Shara’a Simsim, the Palestinian version of Sesame Street.


Jenny Haddad Mosher, Educational Design, Spiritual Formation, and Eastern Orthodoxy. Jenny grew up in the large Palestinian diaspora community in Kuwait, a Palestinian American daughter of a 1948 refugee from Jerusalem; she and her family resettled in the United States in the wake of Gulf War I. An Orthodox Christian, she has degrees from Yale (BA, MAR), St Vladimir’s Seminary (MTh), and Union Theological Seminary (PhD) and works as Director of Research & Educational Design at CrossRoad Institute. A teacher, editor, curricula designer, and grant writer, Jenny is also a published author of various articles and chapters on the theology of childhood and the spiritual formation of children in the Orthodox tradition, and co-author of Find Your Telos: Discover What Orthodox Young Adults & Parishes Can Create Together. Her wider research interests include religious and spiritual formation in traumatized and/or persecuted communities.
Jesse Steven Wheeler, Administrative Support / Public Advocacy. Associate Executive Director, Friends of Sabeel North America (FOSNA); formerly Projects Manager/Support Faculty for the Institute of Middle East Studies, Arab Baptist Theological Seminary, Beirut, Lebanon; formerly Islamic Studies Coordinator at Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, CA. Author, Serving a Crucified King: Meditations on Faith, Politics, and the Unyielding Pursuit of God’s Reign.

Co-Founders
In addition to the Administrative Team listed above, the following individuals were key members of the ISCZ Implementation Committee, and they remain valued members of our Advisory Board and Speakers Bureau.



Advisory Board
We are indebted to the vision, scholarship, and moral witness of each and every individual on our Advisory Board.






For the Editorial Advisory Board of the Journal for the Study of Christian Zionism, Click Here.