Flagg Miller is a Professor of Religious Studies at the University of California at Davis. Flagg’s current research focuses on Islamic coffee cultures and empire-building in South Africa, Yemen and the United States. Author of The Audacious Ascetic: What the bin Laden Tapes Reveal about Al-Qa`ida (2015), Flagg’s extensive fieldwork in Yemen resulted in his first book, entitled The Moral Resonance of Arab Media: Audiocassette Poetry and Culture in Yemen (2007; translated into Arabic in 2021 as Al-Sadā al-Akhlāqī li-Wasāʾil al-Iʿlām al-ʿArabiyyah: Shiʿr Al-Sharīṭ wa-l-Thaqāfah fī-l-Yaman.) Along with publications in a variety of professional journals including the International Journal of Middle East Studies, the American Ethnologist, Critical Studies on Terrorism, the Journal of Language and Communication, and the Journal of Women’s History, Flagg has written the preface to Poems from Guantánamo: The Detainees Speak (University of Iowa Press, 2007). Most recently, Flagg has created a new course entitled “Sacred Plants, Holy Fungi and Their Perils” that draws on his work on coffee while also venturing in directions aligned with those of the Institute.