Core Faculty
Maria M Dakake
Associate Professor
Dr. Dakake researches and publishes on Islamic intellectual history, Quranic studies, Shi`ite and Sufi traditions, and women's spirituality and religious experience. She is one of the general editors and contributing authors of the The Study Quran (HarperOne, 2015), which comprises a translation and verse-by-verse commentary on the Qur'anic text that draws upon the rich and varied tradition of Muslim commentary on their own scripture. Her most recent publication, The Routledge Companion to the Qur'an (September 2021), is a co-edited volume with 40 articles on the Qur'an's history, content, style, and interpretation written by leading contemporary scholars working from different methodological perspectives. She is currently completing a monograph, Toward an Islamic Theory of Religion, and has begun work on a partial translation of a Persian Qur'an commentary written by the 20th century Iranian female scholar, Nusrat Amin.
Hatim El-Hibri
Associate Professor
Hatim El-Hibri is an Associate Professor of Film and Media Studies. His research and teaching interests focus on global and transnational media studies, visual culture studies, Lebanon and the Middle East, urban studies, television studies, and media theory and history. His first book, Visions of Beirut: The Urban Life of Media Infrastructure (Duke University Press, 2021) was awarded the Jane Jacobs Book Award by the Urban Communication Foundation.
He is currently working on a book titled Streaming the Crisis.
Prior to joining George Mason, he was a faculty member of the Media Studies Program at the American University of Beirut.
Benjamin Gatling
Associate Professor
Benjamin Gatling is a folklorist and Associate Professor in the English Department. He holds a Ph.D. and M.A. in Near Eastern Languages and Cultures from The Ohio State University and a B.A. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Prior to coming to Mason, he was a Lecturing Fellow in the Thompson Writing Program at Duke University. His research interests include oral narrative, performance, the ethnography of communication, Persianate oral traditions, and Islam in Central Asia. His research has been supported by fellowships from IREX, the NEH, and Fulbright Program, among others. He serves as Editor of Folklorica: the Journal of the Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Folklore Association.
Nathaniel Greenberg
Interim Director
Associate Professor
Nathaniel Greenberg is an Associate Professor of Arabic in the Department of Modern and Classical Languages at George Mason University. His most recent book is How Information Warfare Shaped the Arab Spring: The Politics of Narrative in Tunisia and Egypt (Edinburgh 2019). A Comparative Literature scholar by training, Professor Greenberg's research and teaching examine the intersection of technology, politics, and culture in the modern Middle East and North Africa. Professor Greenberg is a member of Screen Cultures and the University’s M.A. program in Middle East and Islamic Studies program. In 2015, he created Mason's first B.A concentration in Arabic and from 2021-2024 he was the principal investigator of Project GO, a $1,3 million grant from the Institute for International Education and DLNSEO to train select ROTC students from across the country in critical languages and intercultural communication skills. In addition to his peer-reviewed research, Professor Greenberg's writing and reporting has appeared in The Seattle Times, Jadaliyya, The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Conversation, and Euronews. In 2024, he became Senior Fulbright Scholar to Spain where he completed a new book concerning American public diplomacy.
Bassam S. Haddad
Associate Professor
Bassam Haddad is the Founding Director of the Middle East and Islamic Studies Program and Associate Professor at the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University. He is the author of Business Networks in Syria: The Political Economy of Authoritarian Resilience (Stanford University Press, 2011) and co-editor of the forthcoming book, A Critical Political Economy of the Middle East (Stanford University Press, 2021). Bassam serves as Founding Editor of the Arab Studies Journal and the Knowledge Production Project. He is co-producer/director of the award-winning documentary film, About Baghdad, and director of the series Arabs and Terrorism. Bassam is Co-Founder/Editor of Jadaliyya Ezine and Executive Director of the Arab Studies Institute. He serves on the Board of the Arab Council for the Social Sciences and is Executive Producer of Status Audio Magazine. Bassam is Co-Project Manager for the Salon Syria Project and Director of the Middle East Studies Pedagogy Initiative (MESPI). He received MESA's Jere L. Bacharach Service Award in 2017 for his service to the profession. Currently, Bassam is working on his second Syria book tittled Understanding The Syrian Tragedy: Regime, Opposition, Outsiders (forthcoming, Stanford University Press).
Sumaiya A. Hamdani
Research Director
Associate Professor
Dr. Hamdani received her B.A. from Georgetown University and M.A. and Ph.D. from Princeton University in the field of Islamic history. Her book, Between Revolution and State: the Construction of Fatimid Legitimacy (I.B. Tauris 2006) examines the development of legal and historical literature by the Ismaili Shi’i Fatimid state. Her research has also included articles and reviews in the fields of Shi’i thought, Islamic history, and women in Islam. Her teaching interests include Islamic, Middle East, and world history. Her current research examines the construction of identity in Muslim minority communities in South Asia during the colonial and post-colonial periods. Dr. Hamdani has served on advisory boards of the Middle East Studies Association, the American Institute of Yemeni Studies, and the North American Association of Islamic and Muslim Studies, among others. She co-founded and was director of the Islamic Studies program at George Mason University from 2003-2008.
Yasemin Ipek
Assistant Professor
Yasemin İpek is a tenure-track Assistant Professor in the Global Affairs Program. Her research is situated at the intersection of the anthropology of politics, activism, and inequality; critical studies of humanitarianism and refugees; decoloniality studies; and studies of Islam, sectarianism, and nationalism in the modern Middle East. As a political anthropologist interested in emergent political formations against globally and locally hegemonic forms of power, her interdisciplinary research trajectory draws upon ethnography, political theory, sociology, and critical area studies. She is particularly interested in how crisis can become generative of competing political and ethical lifeworlds, and her diverse research projects demonstrate how new political imaginations and (un) belongings continually arise in contexts of ongoing precarity.
Her book Crisiswork: Activist Lifeworlds and Bounded Futures in Lebanon (Stanford University Press, 2025) draws upon twenty-four months of fieldwork conducted between 2012 and 2015 as well as follow-up research between 2018 and 2023. It examines the relationship between crisis and political imagination in Lebanon by ethnographically studying activism as a simultaneously colonizing and decolonizing field of encounters between a wide range of self-identified activists, such as unemployed NGO volunteers, middle-class consultants, leftist entrepreneurs, and humanitarian workers. Having spent time with activists in different spaces of everyday life such as work, family, and leisure, Dr. İpek theorizes diverse and contradictory meanings of being an activist by drawing on decolonial approaches and interdisciplinary debates on crisis, political agency, social class, ethics, affects, and temporality. In addition to demonstrating the complexity of everyday struggles and civil society activism in Lebanon, the book provides an analytical framework for understanding the multiplicity of political struggles in the global South.
In her second research project, tentatively titled Muslim Humanitarianisms: Transnational Care Networks in the Middle East, she studies Syrian humanitarian actors and explores how piety interacts with secular, nationalist, and cosmopolitan discourses to shape global migration, refugees, and humanitarianism. This book will be among the first ethnographic studies of Muslim Syrian actors’ growing influence in the global field of humanitarian aid. Studying concepts such as “professional Muslim” and “Arab humanitarian aid,” Dr. İpek’s research bridges the anthropology of Islam and secularism with interdisciplinary studies on global inequality and transnational humanitarianism.
Dr. İpek received her Ph.D. degree in Anthropology from Stanford University. She also received a second doctoral degree from the Department of Political Science, Bilkent University, where she studied political memoirs and conservative nationalism in early Republican Turkey. Her research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, and the Center for Humanities Research at George Mason University, among others. She has published in journals such as Cultural Anthropology, American Ethnologist, The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, The Muslim World, Turkish Studies, and Society and Science [Toplum ve Bilim]. She teaches a wide range of subjects such as globalization, anthropology of the Middle East, refugees and humanitarianism, nationalism, youth, activism and social movements, and qualitative research methods.
Peter Mandaville
Director
Professor of International Affairs
Dr. Peter Mandaville is Professor of International Affairs in the Schar School of Policy and Government and Director of the AbuSulayman Center for Global Islamic Studies (ACGIS) in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences (CHSS) at George Mason University. From 2024-25 he served as the Director of the Center for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships and Senior Advisor for Faith Engagement at the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). From 2022-24 he was Senior Advisor for Religion and Inclusive Societies at the United States Institute of Peace (USIP). His prior government experience includes serving as a member of the U.S. State Department's Policy and Planning Staff (2010-12) and as a Senior Advisor in the Secretary of State's Office of Religion and Global Affairs (2015-16). He has also been a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, a Visiting Senior Fellow at the Pew Research Center, and has held affiliations with the RAND Corporation and the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). He is the author or editor of the books The Geopolitics of Religious Soft Power (2023), Wahhabism and the World (2022), Islam & Politics (Third Edition, 2020) and Transnational Muslim Politics: Reimagining the Umma (2001) as well as many journal articles, book chapters, and op-ed/commentary pieces in outlets such as the International Herald Tribune, The Guardian, The Atlantic and Foreign Policy. He has testified multiple times before the U.S. Congress on topics including political Islam and human rights in the Middle East. His research has been supported by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Henry Luce Foundation.
Aziz Sachedina
IIIT Chair in Islamic Studies
Abdulaziz Sachedina, Ph.D., is Professor and IIIT Chair in Islamic Studies at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. Dr. Sachedina, who has studied in India, Iraq, Iran, and Canada, obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Toronto. He has been conducting research and writing in the field of Islamic Law, Ethics, and Theology (Sunni and Shiite) for more than two decades. In the last ten years he has concentrated on social and political ethics, including Interfaith and Intrafaith Relations, Islamic Biomedical Ethics and Islam and Human Rights. Dr. Sachedina’s publications include: Islamic Messianism (State University of New York, 1980); Human Rights and the Conflicts of Culture, co-authored (University of South Carolina, 1988) The Just Ruler in Shiite Islam (Oxford University Press, 1988); The Prolegomena to the Qur’an (Oxford University Press, 1998), The Islamic Roots of Democratic Pluralism (Oxford University Press, 2002), Islamic Biomedical Ethics: Theory and Application (Oxford University Press, February 2009), Islam and the Challenge of Human Rights (Oxford University Press, September 2009), in addition to numerous articles in academic journals. He is an American citizen born in Tanzania.
Fields of interests are Religion and Politics, Islamic Law and Ethics, Sunni and Shiite Theologies, Biomedical Ethics, Human Rights, Democracy and Pluralism, Spirituality and Mysticism.
Mohammad R. Salama
Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs, College of Humanities and Social Sciences
Professor
I bring a decade of academic leadership experience across two large public institutions, with a particular focus on inclusive faculty development, shared governance, and strategic growth in the humanities and social sciences.
As an academic leader committed to fostering faculty excellence and visionary leadership, I have worked to enhance environments at prominent institutions such as San Francisco State University and George Mason University by promoting scholarly achievement and collaboration. My tenure has been characterized by the development of impactful national and international partnerships and a sustained commitment to strengthening liberal arts education. My interdisciplinary research in Comparative Literature, coupled with a deep commitment to the highest standards of faculty professional growth and achievement, has propelled advancements in academic innovation and excellence. I remain steadfast in my dedication to inclusive faculty excellence in teaching, research, and service, integrating these essential principles into the fabric of our academic community.
As Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs in Mason’s thriving College of Humanities and Social Sciences (CHSS), I lead efforts to support faculty and foster a culture of inclusive excellence aligned with Mason’s distinctive educational mission—serving one of the country’s most diverse student populations. My role encompasses proactive faculty recruitment and retention, performance management, and career development, ensuring alignment with the college’s vision for excellence in teaching, research, scholarship, creative activity, and service. I lead the college’s faculty performance management and career development efforts, coordinate new faculty orientations, manage the postdoctoral research and teaching fellows program, and support joint appointment negotiations and documentation. I am also responsible for maintaining efficient coordination and alignment of CHSS faculty affairs activities and governance practices with university-wide faculty affairs policies, support structures, and initiatives.
I manage key elements of faculty affairs, including the Conflict of Commitment review process in RAMP, support joint appointment negotiations, and review Reappointment, Promotion, and Tenure (RPT) cases. This includes oversight of multi-year contract actions, tenure-line reviews, and promotions to associate and full professor. I am also actively engaged, in close collaboration with CHSS senior staff, in strategic budgeting and planning processes and in routine problem-solving and operational management across the college. I collaborate with CHSS senior staff on LAU reorganization initiatives critical to the long-term delivery of shared services support for faculty and staff.
Beyond these responsibilities, I participate in the shared governance of the college through ex officio service on the CHSS Faculty Assembly’s Term Faculty Affairs Committee and Executive Committee. I work with academic units on reviewing and updating workload guidelines, unit bylaws, and unit RPT guidelines. I also serve as part of a university-wide network of associate deans for faculty affairs, collaborating on problem-solving, modeling best practices, and advancing organizational development in faculty support.
My professional growth has been significantly shaped by participation in numerous leadership workshops and seminars in recent years, enhancing my capabilities in strategic budgeting, planning, and problem-solving. These experiences have strengthened my ability to build trust through effective communication, manage key relationships, and utilize data to support a culture of evidence-based decision-making. I work closely with the college’s leadership team on cross-functional projects, including Academic Planning, and serve on relevant university standing committees, councils, and ad hoc working groups to ensure CHSS faculty affairs activities and governance practices are well-coordinated with university-wide structures. I remain fully committed to supporting work-life balance and fostering a learning- and teaching-centered culture that reinforces our collective dedication to Mason’s distinctive mission of serving a diverse and dynamic student population.
Huseyin Yilmaz
Associate Professor
Dr. Yilmaz holds a Ph.D. in History and Middle Eastern Studies from Harvard University. His research interests focus on the early modern Middle East including political thought, geographic imageries, social movements, and cultural history. His most recent publications are “The Eastern Question and the Ottoman Empire: The Genesis of the Near and Middle East in the Nineteenth Century” and “From Serbestiyet to Hürriyet: Ottoman Statesmen and the Question of Freedom During the Late Enlightenment.”
Prior to his appointment at George Mason in 2012, Dr. Yilmaz taught for the Introduction to the Humanities Program and Department of History at Stanford University and the Department of History at University of South Florida. Prior to that, he was appointed Research Fellow with the Internationales Forschungszentrum Kulturwissenschaften in Vienna, Austria.
His new book, Caliphate Redefined: The Mystical Turn in Ottoman Political Thought, is the first comprehensive study of pre-modern Ottoman political thought, and was published by Princeton University Press in January 2018.
Dr. Yilmaz is also the Research Director for the Ali Vural Ak Center for Global Islamic Studies at George Mason University.