Aline Abboud is a Berlin-born journalist and broadcaster. She studied Arabic and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Leipzig. She worked at the German parliament as well as several national German newspapers, radio stations and television networks. She reported for Reuters from Ramallah and Gaza, before joining the German public-service broadcaster ZDF in 2016 as an editor and a news anchor. Since April 2019, Aline has co-hosted a political programme on YouTube and Facebook targeted at under-30s, called DIE DA OBEN!, produced by funk, the German content network of ARD and ZDF. She hosts the Middle East Podcast of zenith Magazine. Since 2021 Aline joined the team of anchors of the evening news show Tagesthemen at the public-service television channel ARD

Moritz Behrendt is a German broadcast and print journalist. His work has featured in major German-language newspapers such as Süddeutsche Zeitung and Neue Zürcher Zeitung, and since 2006 he can be heard on Deutschlandfunk and Deutschlandradio Kultur. Before becoming a journalist, he studied history and journalism in Hamburg, Dakar and Beirut. Moritz is particularly interested in how collective and personal memory shape the way societies in the Middle East and in Africa envision the future. With this in mind, in 2013 he helped launch the interdisciplinary project Muwajahat al-Madi (Confronted Past) which focused on life in Egypt and Tunisia after the revolutions of 2011.

Daniel Gerlach is a German Middle East expert, author and political analyst with a specialism in Middle Eastern history and current affairs. In addition to his work as the Candid Foundation’s director general, he is the editor-in-chief of zenith Magazine, co-chairman of the research and consultancy group zenithCouncil, and co-founder of the Deutscher Levante Verlag GmbH. Daniel frequently appears as a guest analyst on international news broadcasts. He has written, directed and hosted numerous documentaries on the Middle East, for which he was recognized with the National German Television Award in 2013. Daniel studied history and Middle Eastern studies at the universities of Hamburg and Paris IV Sorbonne. In 2019 he was a Poynter fellow at Yale University. His latest book Der Nahe Osten geht nicht unter (The Middle East Is Not Going South) was published in March 2019 by Edition Körber. Currently, Daniel oversees the Candid Foundation’s dialogue and mediation activities and serves as an advisor to the Iraqi National Dialogue Initiative.

Inna Rudolf is a research fellow at the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation, King’s College, London. In 2019 she was a visiting researcher at the Institute of Regional and International Studies (IRIS) at the American University of Iraq. She previously served as a representative of the BMW Foundation Herbert Quandt throughout the Middle East and North Africa. In 2017 she headed the research department of the Tunisian think tank Maghreb Economic Forum. Inna specialises in conflict resolution, international security and the hybridisation of security sectors. Her current research focuses on popular mobilisation tactics, security sector reform and Islamist non-state actors in Iraq, in particular the relationship between the Iraqi state, militias and paramilitary groups.

Christian H. Meier is a German journalist. In 2016 he became a political editor of the German Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung focusing on content from the Middle East. He has also worked at Süddeutsche Zeitung, Deutsche Presse-Agentur and ARD. As well as pursuing research on cultural integration at the Cluster of Excellence in Konstanz, he has studied Islamic studies and history in Munich, Hamburg, Cairo and Tunis. Christian specialises in the development of Islamic thought, contemporary Egypt and Christian communities in the Middle East. Since 2021 Christian serves as the newspaper’s foreign correspondent covering Israel, Palestine and the Horn of Africa region

Marcel Mettelsiefen is a photojournalist and documentary filmmaker. Having interrupted his medical studies to extensively cover Afghanistan, Iraq and Haiti, his work has most recently focused on Syria. His reports from the country have featured on ARD, ZDF, Channel 4, CNN, Al Jazeera and Canal+. His film, The Agony of Aleppo’s Children, was awarded TV News Story of the Year by the London Foreign Press Association in 2013. Marcel received the Hanns-Joachim-Friedrichs-Preis for outstanding journalism and the Cinema for Peace Award in 2014, as well as two International Emmy Awards and prizes from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA). In 2017, Marcel's Syria documentary Watani was nominated for the Academy Awards (Oscars) in the category documentary short.

A political scientist by training, Leo Wigger specializes in political and religious movements, migration, security in South and Central Asia (including the South Caucasus), where he has undertaken extensive fieldwork. Leo is also researching the interplay between sports, politics, and identity with a specific focus on football. He is a regular contributor to zenith magazine and previously worked as a trainee speechwriter for the president of the European Parliament. He is a Raisina Young Leader 2023 by the Observer Research Foundation (New-Delhi) and ZEIT-Stiftung. In 2022, Leo co-authored the book "Katar 2022, so eine WM gab es noch nie" a primer on the politics surrounding the Football World Cup in Qatar.