Maria Rita Corticelli is an editor and independent researcher. She is the author of the book Religious Minorities in Iraq: Co-existence, Faith and Recovery after ISIS (Bloomsbury, 2002) and of The Kakais of Iraq: History, Beliefs and Culture (Bloomsbury, 2025). She was a scholar in residence at the Shoah Foundation at the University of Southern California. In 2022 she was awarded the Herbert W. Mason Fellowship.