Alae El Ouazzani is an architect born and raised in Morocco, and a graduate of the Ecole Spéciale d’Architecture of Paris (ESA) in France. Her main research interest revolves around Pre-Islamic influences on North African Contemporary Architecture with a focus on the impact of the colonial period. In exploring this thesis, Alae aims to develop a more expansive understanding of North African heritage beyond the prism of orientalism and other Eurocentric biases. Past research projects include examining the urban history of Moroccan cities, taking into consideration the impact of popular beliefs in urban morphologies. During her field work she traced and documented the evolution of historical sites in Rabat, such as Sidi Yabouri Saint Evora cemetery, home to handcrafted stonework, on the deserted tombs of the first inhabitants of the city. The research revealed her life-long commitment to become a researcher in the field of historic preservation, hoping to have an impact on the becoming of cities in emerging countries such as her own, Morocco. Language is an important part in the way she approaches research, asare the way Arabic, French, English, and Spanish shapes her work and her sensory exploration of spaces and temporalities.

Yusuf Umrethwala is an MA candidate in the dual degree program in Islamic Studies and Muslim Cultures at Columbia University and Aga Khan University (London). He pursued his undergraduate and graduate studies at Aljamea-tus-Saifiyah in Surat, India, with a major in Arabic literature (ʾAdab), and went on to lecture and research at the same university.

His past research interests include the expression of emotional intensity and visceral imagery by the use of lingual derivations in the poems of Ṭayyībī-Ismaʿīlī Laureates of Yemen in the 13th century. In a more recent project, his research focused on the study of the trans-national socio-religious migratory history of his community, the Dawoodi Bohras starting from the early 19th century to the present day, his findings on which were recently self-published in a book entitled Travel and You Shall Prosper: The History of Migrations of the Dawoodi Bohras. This book covers the migratory history of the Dawoodi Bohras to over 40 countries from India across 9 geographical regions with a detailed account of the early migrants and community developments. Since nothing of this kind was previously documented, his work mostly relied on oral histories and ethnographic research, and is also complemented with a rich collection of old images and archives, each of which tells and complements the vivid history of migrations. He hopes to deepen his research and use his Master's experience to enrich and publish this work. He has also studied and written on the iconography of an old wooden artifact belonging to the Western Fatimid Palace in Cairo. 

With his past research experiences in the history and literature of the Fatimid dynasty, he was always amazed by the significance of geniza documents in complementing the existing scholarship from a bottom-up approach and providing an evidentiary basis for the social history of the period. For the past two years, he has been working as a research assistant at the Princeton Geniza lab where he works primarily on Arabic script documents coupled with his limited and growing Judaeo-Arabic experience. He is currently working on updating the DIMME database. He is presently a visiting scholar at Princeton University's Near Eastern Studies Department where he is writing his dissertation on Fatimid petitions under the supervision of Professor Marina Rustow. To know more about his research, contact him at ymu2101@columbia.edu.

Cimone Rajan, a 23-year old full-time singer and songwriter, graduated from Berklee College of Music in 2019 with a songwriting degree and music technology minor. Her interest in Islamic Studies grew progressively while she was at Berklee after participating in the Berklee Study Abroad Program in Valencia, Spain. After experiencing the rich cultural impact of the medieval Muslim world on Spanish and Mediterranean art and culture, Cimone decided to tailor her songwriting degree towards the exploration of Muslim culture, along with her own heritage as a Middle Eastern and Pakistani-Canadian. This pursuit eventually led to her upcoming debut EP (album), “after the rain”; a sonic blend of RnB and Sufi sounds. During the dual-degree MA program at Columbia and the ISMC, Cimone plans to work at the intersection of Muslim art and culture and women of the Muslim world, to better understand and study the underpinnings of their historical influences in shaping modern culture globally. She is excited to continue exploring the connection between Islam and the arts, with a hope to introducea new narrative as a Muslim artist in the western music industry.

Fareah Fysudeen is an MA candidate for the Columbia and Aga Khan University dual degree in Islamic Studies and Muslim Cultures. She holds a BA in Philosophy and English with Creative Writing sub-concentration from the University of Michigan.