Nicolas Hénin, born 1975 in Le Mans (France), is a freelancer journalist for, among others, ARTE and Le Point. For years, Nicolas Hénin has reported regularly out of the areas of conflicts in Iraq, Libya and Syria and witnessed the Battle for Bagdad and the conquest of Raqqa. 2013 he was kidnapped in Syria by jihadists. Hénin could be liberated by the French government in 2014, together with Pierre Torres, Didier François and Edouard Elias. In February 2015, the French edition of his book „Jihad Academy: Nos erreurs face à l’Etat islamique“ was published at Fayard.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Meinrad Heck was born in 1957. From 1979 on he worked as a journalist, for example as correspondent for the Stuttgarter Zeitung. He lives in Karlsruhe and works freelance since 1997. In 1987 he was awarded the Theodor-Wolff-Preis and in 2001 the Wächterpreis for his Flowtex-investigation.

Katharina Hacker was born in Frankfurt in 1967, where she was raised. She studied Philosophy, History and Judaic studies in Freiburg and Jerusalem. From 1990 to 1996 she lived in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. For her novel The Havenots she received the German book award (Deutscher Buchpreis). Katharina Hacker and her family live in Berlin.

Birgit Hummler was born in 1953, is married and has a daughter. After her studies of German and Slavic literature and postgraduate studies in journalism and communication sciences, from 1983 on, she worked as a freelance journalist. Among others, she supervised the development program of science journalism of the Robert Bosch foundation and nowadays works as freelance writer for various professional journals, PR agencies and companies. For her first crime novel Stahlbeton, Birgit Hummler was awarded the Stuttgarter Krimipreis in the category Best Economy Thriller.

Ulrich Hofmann, born in 1973, studied geology, geography, French, Spanish and German. He has lived in Bavaria, Spain, and Italy and currently lives in Berlin. He has worked as scriptdoctor, freelance corrector and author.

Peter Jakubowski was born in 1967 in Dortmund and studied economics at the University of Münster with a focus on environmental economics. After conducting research at the Institute for Transportation Research in Münster and at the German Aerospace Centre in Cologne he left in the summer of 2000 for the Federal Institute for Research on Building, Urban Affairs and Spatial Development (BBSR) in Bonn. There he increasingly focused on urbanistics, both in his research and his political consulting, and published on a wide variety of urban affairs. He lives with his family in Düsseldorf.

Gabriel Josipovici was born in Nice. During his course of education he first stayed in Egypt and later in England where he graduated in English literature in 1961. In the 1990s he resigned his occupation as lecturer in English at School of European Studies to entirely consecrate himself to his writing.
He is the author of fifteen novels, three volumes of short stories and six critical books, as well as of plays for stage and radio. Josipovici lives in Sussex and London.

Ann-Sophie Kaiser was born in Berlin where she still lives. She studied physics for one short semester at the Humboldt University before realising that she prefers writing. Kaiser loves to swim in the lakes of Berlin and to do long walks in the capital's neighbourhoods while imagining herself living in the historical Berlin. Unter den Linden 6 is her first historical novel.

Robert Kaltenbrunner was born in 1960 and trained as an architect and an urban planner before working from 1990 to 1999 as a project manager for large-scale urban projects in the Senate Department for Building, Housing and Transportation in Berlin. Since 2000 he heads the Department for Building and Housing at the Federal Institute for Research on Building, Urban Affairs and Spatial Development (Berlin/Bonn). He is co-editor of the journal Informationen zur Raumentwicklung and member of the academic board of FORUM STADT. He has published widely on urban affairs.

Mouhanad Khorchide was born in 1971 in Beirut, grew up in Saudi Arabia and studied Islamic theology and sociology in Beirut and Vienna. In 2010 he became professor for Islamic Religious Education and since 2011 he is head of the Centre for Islamic Theology in Münster, coordinator of the post graduate program for Islamic Theology of the Mercator foundation as well as principal investigator of the cluster of excellence “Religion and Politics in Pre-Modern and Modern Cultures”. Recent publications include Gott glaubt an den Menschen. Mit dem Islam zu einem neuen Humanismus (2015), Scharia – der missverstandene Gott: der Weg zu einer modernen islamischen Ethik (2013), Islam ist Barmherzigkeit: Grundzüge einer modernen Religion (2012).