Arnim Langer is Director of the Centre for Research on Peace and Development (CRPD), Chair Holder of the UNESCO Chair in Sustainable Peacebuilding and Associate Professor of International Politics at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium. In addition, he is currently holding an Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship for experienced researchers at Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg. He has published numerous articles and book chapters on matters of ethnicity, inequality and conflict.

John Lonsdale is a fellow of Trinity College, University of Cambridge where he retired as Professor of Modern African History. He was co-winner of the Trevor Reece prize in Commonwealth history (1992) with co-author Bruce Berman, for Unhappy Valley: Conflict in Kenya and Africa (1992), he has co-edited and contributed to Mau Mau and Nationhood (2003); Writing for Kenya: The Life and Works of Henry Muoria (2009); Ethnic Diversity and Economic Instability in Africa (Cambridge, 2012); and S. H. Fazan's memoir, Colonial Kenya Observed (2015).

Frances Stewart is Emeritus Professor of Development Economics, University of Oxford. Her previous publications include Advancing Human Development: Theory and Practice (2018) with Gustav Ranis and Emma Samman; Horizontal Inequalities and Conflict: Understanding Group Violence in Multiethnic Societies (2008); and War and Underdevelopment, with E. V. K. Fitzerald and others (2001).