ABU BAKARR BAH is Presidential Research Professor of Sociology and Department Chair at Northern Illinois University (USA). He is also Founding Editor of African Conflict & Peacebuilding Review, African Editor for Critical Sociology, and Founding Director of the Institute for Research and Policy Integration in Africa. Bah is author of Breakdown and Reconstitution: Democracy, the Nation-State, and Ethnicity in Nigeria and numerous articles published in top journals such as African Affairs and Critical Sociology and an invited speaker at over forty major institutions around the world.

NIKOLAS EMMANUEL is Professor of Political Science in the Graduate School of International Peace Studies at Soka University (Japan). He is also an External Research Collaborator with the Centre for Global Criminology at the University of Copenhagen. Nikolas has been an invited speaker at major institutions such as Cornell University, ETH Zurich, the University of Tokyo, and the Kofi Annan Peacekeeping Training Center.