H. E. Chehabi is Professor of International Relations and History Emeritus, Boston University, and Honorary Professor, School of History, University of St. Andrews. He studied geography and history at the University of Caen and international relations at Science Po before going to Yale University, where he received his PhD in political science. He has taught at Harvard University, UCLA, and Boston University. He has held a Humboldt Fellowship as well as fellowships at St. Antony's College, Oxford, and the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, DC.

David Motadel is Associate Professor of International History at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). A graduate of Cambridge, where he was a Gates Scholar, he has held visiting positions at Harvard, Yale, Oxford, Sciences Po, and the Sorbonne. He is the author of a book on the history of Muslims under German rule in the Second World War (Harvard University Press, 2014), which was awarded the Ernst Fraenkel Prize, and the editor of a volume on Islam and the European Empires (Oxford University Press, 2014). In 2018, he received the Philip Leverhulme Prize for History.