David Lawson is Senior Researcher at The Nordic Africa Institute, Uppsala, Visiting Professor at The University of Helsinki and Associate Professor of Development Economics and Public Policy at the University of Manchester. He has 25 years of developing country public policy experience, particularly in relation to policy implementation and research on extreme poverty and gender, in SSA. He has published in leading development journals and consulted and advised extensively for the UNECA and World Bank.

Adam Dubin is an Assistant Professor of Law in the International Public Law Department of Universidad Pontificia Comillas in Madrid, Spain, where he also directs a Master's program in International and European Business Law and a clinical program on human rights in Sub-Saharan Africa. He is also an Adjunct Professor of Politics at New York University's Madrid Campus, where he teaches Introduction to International Development an Comparative Human Rights Law. Dr Dubin has extensively consulted for organizations such as the UN and EU on human rights and development projects.

Lea Mwambene is Professor of Law in the department of Private Law, and currently the Deputy Dean: Teaching and Learning of the Faculty of Law, University of the Western Cape, South Africa. Her teaching and research interests are in the general fields of African customary law and human rights. Driven by the genuine concern about the interaction between law, ideology and social practice, her recent research (with Ms Helen Kruuse from Rhodes University, South Africa) has included fieldwork in the Eastern Cape, South Africa, interviewing rural people about the impact of the reformed customary marriage laws in South Africa on the enjoyment of human rights by women and children.