Olivier Roy (1949) is directeur d’études at EHESS (School of Higher Studies in Social Sciences) in Paris and head researcher at the CNRS, France’s National Scientific Research Center. He has taught at the Paris Institut d’Etudes Politiques and at the University of California a Berkeley. He is currently professor of Political and Social Theories at the European University Institute in Florence, where he is head of the Mediterranean Program. Also, he is a consultant to the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs since 1984, and of the UN Office for the coordination of relief efforts in Afghanistan since 1988. Following are some of his books translated into Italian: Global Muslim (Feltrinelli, 2003); L’impero assente (Carocci, 2004); Islam alla sfida della laicità (Marsilio, 2008); La santa ignoranza (Feltrinelli, 2009).