Gianluca is a comparative lawyer working on constitutional design, State-Islam relations, citizenship, shifting semiotics of law, and images of law in popular culture. He holds a PhD in Public Law from the University of Turin, and is Professor of Law at Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations of the Aga Khan University in London, where he also leads the Governance Programme. He is currently working on a new book on the law’s imaginaire in Egyptian television drama.

Serena is Associate Professor of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies and co-director of the Institute for the Study of the Middle East and Muslim Societies at the University of Bern. Before moving to Bern, she was assistant professor at the University of Hamburg, post-doc at the University of Zurich and visiting fellow at the Program in Islamic Law at Harvard Law School. She studied in Naples, Halle and Cairo. Her main research interests include history of gender, sexuality and LGBTQI+ rights in the Middle East, Islamic law, history of the Middle East.