1- Greg Simon: Greg Simon was born in Christchurch, New Zealand. Greg graduated with a PhD from the University of Canterbury (New Zealand) in 2004, in 2015 awarded Associate Professor at the Department of Government, Uppsala University (Sweden). Greg Simons is currently a lecturer at the Department of Communication Science at Turiba University in Riga, Latvia. He is also an Associated Researcher at the Department of Journalism and Media at Daffodil International University in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Research interests include the changing political dynamics and relationships, mass media, public diplomacy, information warfare, hybrid warfare and subversion, organised persuasive communication, political marketing, crisis management communications, media and armed conflict, and the Russian Orthodox Church. Also researching the relationships and connections between information, politics and armed conflict more broadly, such as the GWOT and Arab Spring, the interpretation and representation of events and processes in the New Cold War (within the context of the transforming global order). Simons is the author and/or editor of numerous articles, chapters and books: with over 17 books, 30 book chapters and more than 120 articles, with nearly 400 presentations around the world and approximately 400 media interviews. 2- Khaled AlKassimi: Khaled Al-Kassimi has been academically affiliated with the American University in the Emirates since the AY 2021-2022 and has proudly served in the past as their Research Support Director from the year 2021 to 2024. Traveling the bridge linking the orient and the occident has permitted Khaled Al-Kassimi to produce scholarly work navigating research questions and disciplines accenting Jurisprudence, Philosophical Theology, and Political Sociology thereby establishing a reconnaissance between multiple epistemic registers and their social reverberations. His teaching expertise and excellence has been awarded the Keith Leppmann award at McMaster University on three separate occasions. His internationally acclaimed monograph published by Routledge entitled “International Law, Necropolitics, and Arab Lives – The Legalization of Creative Chaos in Arabia” argues that International Relations and International Law continue to be accented by epistemic violence by naturalizing a separation between law and morality. The monograph was recognized and awarded at the American University in the Emirates in the year 2022. Finally, he is currently working on a second book with Routledge seeking to rupture the secular garb of International Relations as an Anglo-American discipline by incorporating religion generally, and Islamic Theology/Philosophy specifically into the disciplinary discussion.3- Kleanthis Kyriakidis: Dr Kleanthis Kyriakidis is a Retired Captain of the Hellenic Navy. He earned his PhD from the University of the Aegean in 2018 in Political Science (master’s thesis on the challenge of the rise of Political Islam) He has Bachelor from the Hellenic Naval Academy and 3 Master degrees: two from the Naval Postgraduate School (2005) in Monterey, CA (one of them MA in National Security Studies/ specialization in Middle East Studies with Distinction and another MSc in Physical Oceanography) and a Masters in Public Administration from Harvard Kennedy School (2011), where he was presented with the Lucius Littauer Award. He is also a graduate of the Hellenic Defense University, the Supreme Joint War College as well as the Hellenic Naval War College. Assistant Professor Kyriakidis has teaching experience as an instructor of the Supreme Joint War College, the Naval War College and Air War College in Greece and the NATO Defense College in Rome for several years. As regards his management experience, he has served as an advisor to the Deputy Minister of Defense, as Head of the Plans and Policy Directorate of the Hellenic Navy and as Director of Studies at the Naval War College, where he supervised the modernization of the War College curriculum. As regards academic research, Assistant Professor Kyriakidis has published two history books and five booklets and contributed with chapters to six political science books. Furthermore, he has published more than 250 articles dealing with a wide scope of diverse contemporary issues mainly in American and Greek journals. He has participated in more than 60 national/ international conferences and seminars. His research interests include Globalization, IR Theory, Geopolitics, World History (focus on Middle East), Terrorism, Piracy, Modern Strategic Thought, Negotiations, Crisis Management and Leadership. Last but not least, he has been a Senior Editor for the Harvard Kennedy School Review and is a member of the Steering Board of the nonprofit organizations Academy for Strategic Analyses, Institute for the Study of Hellenic and Arab Communities and the Hellenic Institute of Cultural Diplomacy. He is a Senior Consultant of Strategy International Institute and a member of the Scientific Board of the GEOPOL Institute. He is also a member of the European Consortium for Political Research, the International Political Science Association, the International Public Policy Association, the Hellenic Society of International Law & International Relations and the American Academy of Political Science.
