Åshild Kolås is a social anthropologist and Research Professor at the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), and was the head of PRIOs Conflict Resolution and Peacebuilding Program from 2005 to 2011. She has conducted long-term fieldwork in multi-ethnic communities in India and China, and has written on Tibet, Nepal, Inner Mongolia and Northeast India with a focus on governance and governmentality, identity politics, discourse and representation. Her latest books are Basque Nationhood. Towards a Democratic Scenario (co-edited with Pedro Ibarra Güell) and Reclaiming the Forest. The Ewenki Reindeer Herders of Aoluguya (co-edited with Yuanyuan Xie). She is also the author of Tourism and Tibetan Culture in Transition. A Place Called Shangrila and On the Margins of Tibet: Cultural Survival on the Sino-Tibetan Frontier (with Monika P. Thowsen). Since 2006, Åshild Kolås has coordinated an institutional cooperation between PRIO and the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA) in New Delhi. Her current research is on gender, peacebuilding and conflict management in Northeast India and Myanmar.

Pedro Ibarra Güell is a professor of Political Science at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), where he served as director of the Department of Political Science and Public Administration. During the end of Francoism and the transition to democracy in Spain, Dr. Güell worked as a labour lawyer and advocate for political prisoners. He later founded and directed Party Hartuz, a consolidated research group on participatory democracy based at the University of the Basque Country. He has been a visiting professor at universities in Bordeaux (France), Barcelona (Spain), and Reno, Nevada (USA). His main areas of research are theories of collective action, political participation, social movements and nationalism, in which he has conducted numerous research projects and published extensively. In addition to his academic work, he is known for his association with various Basque social movements.