Biographical notes

Amin Banani is emeritus professor of history and Persian literature at the University of California, Los Angeles. His writings probe a wide range of topics in Persian cultural history.

Dominic Brookshaw is a doctoral candidate in Arabic and Persian literature at Oxford University.

Christopher Buck (PhD, University of Toronto, 1996) is assistant professor of American thought and language at Michigan State University in East Lansing, Michigan. He is the author of Paradise and Paradigm: Key Symbols in Persian Christianity and the Bahá'í Faith (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999) and Symbol and Secret: Qur'an Commentary in Bahá'u'lláh's Kitáb-i Íqán (Los Angeles: Kalimat Press, 1995), and is currently writing God and Apple Pie: Visions of America's Spiritual Destiny (SUNY Press, forthcoming).

William Collins is the policy and planning program manager at the United States copyright office in the Library of Congress, Washington, DC, and author of a Bahá'í bibliography, articles on Bahá'í history and librarianship, and a work in progress on millennialism and biblical interpretation in the Bahá'í community. He trained as a librarian, has worked at academic libraries in the US, and at the Bahá'í World Centre library in Haifa, Israel.

Alec Dinwoodie studied literature at University of Chicago, Oxford University, and the Iowa Writer's Workshop. He now lives and works in Chicago.

Novin Doostdar co-founded Oneworld Publications in Oxford, England, with his wife Juliet.

Graham Hassall has a PhD in history from the Research School of Pacific Studies, Australian National University, and is associate dean, undergraduate studies, Landegg Academy, Switzerland.

Geeta Kingdon is a research officer in the economics department at Oxford University and her research interests centre on education economics and labour economics in developing countries. She is working on gender discrimination in education in India and on unemployment in South Africa.

Stephen N. Lambden has lectured in Bahá'í studies at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne and written a number of articles on aspects of the Bábí and Bahá'í religions. Among his published work are articles for the Encyclopaedia Iranica, the Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, and for a number of Bahá'í publishers, including Kalimát's Studies in Bábí and Bahá'í Religions series.

Jonathan Ledgard is central and east European correspondent of The Economist and, in his spare time, one of that newspaper's film critics.

Franklin Lewis is assistant professor of Persian at Emory University and author of Rumi: Past and Present, East and West (Oneworld, 2000), and "In a Voice of Their Own": A Collection of Stories by Iranian Women Written Since the Revolution of 1979 (Mazda, 1996).

Simon Mawhinney holds a BA in music from Oxford University, and an MA from York University. He is a PhD student in composition at Queen's University of Belfast.

Moojan Momen is a private scholar. His latest books are The Phenomenon of Religion (Oneworld, Oxford, 1999) and Islam and the Bahá'í Faith (George Ronald, Oxford, 2000).

Sen McGlinn is a student of Arabic and Persian at Leiden University.

David Piff has degrees in psychology and history from Western Washington University, and a PhD in the sociology of religion from the University of Copenhagen. Apart from his work as an archivist at the Bahá'í World Centre in Haifa, Israel, his research interests include the sociology, discourse and folklore of the Bahá'í community.

Sholeh A. Quinn is associate professor of history at Ohio University. Her research is on Safavid historiography.

Udo Schaefer, former chief prosecutor at the state court of Heidelberg, retired in 1988. He is the author of a number of books and articles, most recently co-authoring Making the Crooked Straight (George Ronald, 2000).

Ian C. Semple gained an MA in German and French at Oxford University and is a fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales. He is serving as a member of the Universal House of Justice at the Bahá'í World Centre.

Maureen Sier received her masters degree in cultural history from Aberdeen University in Scotland, which involved fieldwork exploring the impact of the Bahá'ís of Samoa and Tonga on local culture. She is completing doctoral research on women and religion in post-independence Samoa.

Robert Weinberg is a broadcast journalist and radio producer. He has particular interests in Bahá'í history and the arts, and is the author of three books published by George Ronald.