Note: Speakers are in alphabetical order, not in the order they will address the group.

Catherine L. Albanese is Professor and Chair of Religious Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She is the author of the widely used textbook America: Religions and Religion, now in its third edition, and of numerous other articles and books, including Nature Religion in America: From the Algonkian Indians to the New Age. Recent publications include American Spiritualities: A Reader, Reconsidering Nature Religion, and "American Religious History: A Bibliographical Essay," just published by the U.S. State Department Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, and available on-line at http://exchanges.state.gov/education/amstudy/currents/ReligionCAS.pdf Her most recent book, A Republic of Mind and Spirit: A Cultural History of American Metaphysical Religion, won the 2007 AAR Book Award for Historical Studies. Albanese is a former president of the American Academy of Religion.
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Anne Barnhart is the UCSB librarian for Religious Studies, Chicana and Chicano Studies and Latin American and Iberian Studies. In addition to her Liibrary Science degree, she holds an MA in Religious Studies and an MA in Latin American and Caribbean Studies, both from the University of Illinois. She regularly publishes in the field of Latin American research.
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Juan E. Campo is a Professor of Religious Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He specializes in Islam and Culture, Comparative Study of Religions, Religion and the Culinary Cultures of the Middle East, Modern Pilgrimages, Discourses on Death and the Afterlife, and Modern Islamic movements. Among his many publications is The Other Sides of Paradise: Explorations into the Religious Meanings of Domestic Space in Islam, which won the AAR best book award in the history category in 1993.
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Mario Garcia is Professor of History and Chicano studies at University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the author or editor of several books on Chicano history, social movements, and spirituality.
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Arthur Gross-Schaefer is a Rabbi, a lawyer, a legal ethicist, a C.P.A., a mediator, a law professor, a writer, and advocate for Israel. Currently, he is a professor of business law at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. As an educator, rabbi and lawyer, Rabbi Gross-Schaefer consults and leads workshops on issues of religion and public education.
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Maher Hathout is Senior Advisor to the Muslim Public Affairs Council and sits on the Board of Directors of the Interfaith Alliance. Dr. Hathout has written extensively on Islam, human rights, democracy, Middle East politics, and Bosnia. His articles and interviews have appeared in such prominent newspapers as The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Christian Science Monitor. He appears frequently on national television and radio talk shows.
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Gregory A. Hillis is Lecturer in Sanskrit and Tibetan Languages in the Department of Religious Studies. His work focuses on Tibetan and Sanskrit literature, and especially on the rhetoric of Tibetan Buddhist visionary literature.

Hymon Johnson, MBA, Ed.D., is Professor Emeritus at Antioch University Santa Barbara, and is currently a lecturer at UCSB. He holds a doctorate in education from Northern Illinois University and is a former professor/lecturer at Northern Illinois University, University of Nairobi (Kenya), California State University (Northridge), and Fielding Institute. His teaching and research concentrations have included a variety of areas in management and education, along with comparative philosophy, religion, and ethics. Dr. Johnson is a founding and current board member of the Interfaith Initiative of Santa Barbara County, as well as several other school and non-profit boards. He is also widely sought as a speaker, consultant, and workshop facilitator on wide-ranging topics in leadership, comparative religion, spirituality, education in human values, character development, and parenting.

Mark Juergensmeyer is a Professor of Sociology and Religious Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the director of the Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies and specializes in Religious Violence, Conflict Resolution, and South Asian Religion and Politics. He has published more than 200 articles and a dozen books including Terror in the Mind of God: the Global Rise of Religious Violence.
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Sara Kamali is a graduate student in Global and International Studies, currently working with the Orfalea Center on the Luce Project on Religion in Global Civil Society. Sara graduated from the University of St. Andrews, Scotland, with a joint Master of Arts, Honours, in International Relations and Middle Eastern Studies, having written her thesis on Algerian state-sponsored terrorism. While at St. Andrews, she interned at the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence (CSTPV) as desk officer to Iran, Iraq and Jordan. Sara has also interned at the Organization of the Islamic Conference, the New York mission to the United Nations as well as at the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) at the UN Headquarters. Sara begins her Ph.D. in Islamic Studies this fall at the Religious Studies Department of the University of California, Santa Barbara this Fall.

J. Shawn Landres lives in Los Angeles, where he is Director of Research at Synagogue 3000 (S3K) and a Visiting Research Fellow at UCLA's Center for Jewish Studies. His latest book is Religion, Violence, Memory, and Place (co-edited with Oren Baruch Stier, Indiana University Press, 2006).

Kathryn McClymond is Associate Professor and Chair of Religious Studies at Georgia State University in Atlanta. An alumna of UCSB's Religious Studies PhD program, her research interests are Comparative History of Religions, Hinduism, Judaism, Ritual Theory, and Religion and Literature. In addition to courses in those interests, she regulalry offers courses on the religious dimensions of the Holocaust, biblical studies, women and Religion, and world religions. Her forthcoming work is entitled Beyond Sacred Violence: A Comparative Study of Sacrifice.
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J. Gordon Melton is a leading expert in the study of new religious movements (NRMs). In 1969 he founded the Institute for the Study of American Religion which has pioneered research on North American religious groups and is the author of the Encyclopedia of American Religion (5th edition, 1996). He is the senior editor for the Directory of European Religions. Additionally, he has authored and edited some 25 books on American Religions including the Religious Leaders of America, the Encyclopedia of African American Religions, The Church of Scientology and the award-winning New Age Encyclopedia.

Kathleen Moore recently joined the faculty of Religious Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Prior to that, she was Associate Professor and former chair of the Law and Society Program at UCSB. Her research interests include Immigration, Muslim Communities in the West, Religion and Law, Islamic Law, Civil Rights and Liberties, Cultural Pluralism, and Cultural Studies. Among her recent work is an article published in the journal Muslim World entitled “’United We Stand’: American Attitudes toward (Muslim) Immigration Post September 11th.”
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Jerry Roberts is a California journalist who writes, blogs and hosts a TV talk show about politics, policy and media. Former political editor, editorial page editor and managing editor of the San Francisco Chronicle, he serves as student adviser for the Daily Nexus newspaper at UC Santa Barbara. He is the author of “NeverLet Them See You Cry,” a biography of Senator Dianne Feinstein. He also founded the online news site Calbuzz.

Wade Clark Roof is a Professor of Religious Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara where he holds the J.F. Rowney Endowed Chair of Religion and Society. He is the Director of the Walter H. Capps Center for the Study of Ethics, Religion and Public Life. He served as Chair of the Department of Religious Studies, UCSB, from 1999-2004.
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Jan Shipps is professor emeritus of history and religious studies at IUPUI, and research associate at The Polis Center. She is generally regarded as the foremost non-Mormon scholar of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Her first book on the subject was Mormonism: The Story of a New Religious Tradition published by the University of Illinois Press. Recently, Illinois published her book Sojourner in the Promised Land: Forty Years Among the Mormons, in which she interweaves her own history of Mormon-watching with 16 essays on Mormon history and culture. She is now at work on a book with the working title Religion in Mid-sized Cities.
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Aaron Sokoll is a graduate student in the Religious Studies Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Ines Talamantez is a Professor of Religious Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her specializations are Native American Religious Traditions and Philosophies, Religions of Mexico and Chicano Religion, Women in Religion, Religion and Ecology, and Religion and Healing in Native America. She is responsible for the development of the field of Native American Religious Traditions, making UCSB unique in offering a PhD emphasis in that area. She recently co-edited a work entitled Teaching Religion and Healing with Linda Barnes.
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Colleen Windham is a doctoral candidate in Religious Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where she studies intersections between Christian thought, contemporary philosophy, and political theory. She also serves as a consultant to elementary schools that seek to integrate study of religion into school curriculum.