Olaf Kaltmeier is Professor of Iberoamerican History at Bielefeld University. He is director of CALAS, the Maria Sibylla Merian Center for Advanced Latin American Studies in the Humanities and Social Science and founding director of the Center for the Center for InterAmerican Studies (CIAS) at Bielefeld University. He has done research and teaching in Mexico, Ecuador, Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Argentina, and the USA.

Edgardo Lander is Professor Emeritus of Social Sciences at the Universidad Central Venezuela (UCV) in Caracas. He served on the Organizing Committee of the World Social Forum held in Venezuela in 2006. As part of the Venezuelan delegation, he participated in negotiations on the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas, which was ultimately defeated. Other positions include Fellow of the Transnational Institute (Amsterdam); member of the academic advisory board of CALAS (Maria Sibylla Merian Center for Advanced Latin American Studies); participant of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation's Latin American Working Group on Alternatives to Development, at its regional office in Quito; and Visiting Professor in the Latin American Cultural Studies Doctoral Program at the Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar in Quito, Ecuador.