Immanuel Wallerstein was Senior Research Fellow in Sociology at Yale from 2000 until his death in 2019. From 1976 to 1999, he was Distinguished Professor of Sociology at Binghamton University (SUNY), where he founded and directed the Fernand Braudel Center for the Study of Economies, Historical Systems, and Civilizations. Wallerstein was recognized for his brilliance the world over. His many books and countless articles have been translated into dozens of languages. Of them, his world-renowned four-volume history of The Modern World-System is a masterful examination of the Western world from 1500 to the modern era. He is now and will be for time to come considered by many to be the most influential social scientist of his era.

Charles Lemert is University Professor Emeritus at Wesleyan University, USA. He has written extensively on social theory, globalization, and culture. Among more than 50 books, he is the author of Muhammad Ali: Trickster in the Culture of Irony (2003), Postmodernism Is Not What You Think (2005), and Globalization: An Introduction to the End of the Known World (2015) and the editor of Social Theory: The Multicultural, Global, and Classic Readings (2021). His recent books include Americans Thinking America and Silence and Society (both 2025).