Colin Clarke is Emeritus Professor at Oxford University and an Emeritus Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford. He has taught at the Universities of Toronto, and Liverpool where he was, until 1981, Reader in Geography and Latin American Studies. His research interests include urbanization in developing countries, especially the Caribbean and Latin America; race, ethnicity and class; peasantries; and the problems of small, recently decolonized states. His regions of specialization are Latin America and the Caribbean, and more recently Central Europe. He is a geographer whose research interests intersect with history, anthropology and sociology.

Tony Payne is Emeritus Professor at the School of Sociological Studies, Politics and International Relations, University of Sheffield, UK. He joined the Department of Politics in 1985. He was Chairman of the Department between 1992 and 1995 and again between 1998 and 2001. He served as the Director of the Political Economy Research Centre (PERC) from 1996 to 1999 and Co-Director from 2002 to 2004. He became one of the founding Co-Directors of The Sheffield Political Economy Research Institute (SPERI) and retained that role until July 2017.