Mychailo Wynnyckyj is Associate Professor of Sociology at the National University “Kyiv-Mohyla Academy” (where he has also served as Director of the Doctoral School) and holds a cross-appointment to Lviv Business School of Ukrainian Catholic University, where he teaches MBA and Executive Development courses. He was awarded a Ph.D. in Economic Sociology in 2003 from the University of Cambridge, UK. During the 2013–2014 Maidan protests, and subsequently during the early years of Russian aggression in the Crimea and Donbas, Mychailo was a regular commentator for English-language media outlets and provided analysis on current events in his "Thoughts from Kyiv" blog. Since 2015, Mychailo has served as Advisor to Ukraine’s Minister of Education and Science. Born in Canada, he has lived in Kyiv with his wife and four children since 2003.

Serhii Plokhy received his doctorate in history from Kyiv University in 1990. He was the chair of the Department of World History at Dnipropetrovsk University and conducted research at the Institute of Archeography and Source Studies of the National Academy Sciences of Ukraine, where he headed the Department of the History of Culture. He currently serves as the Associate Director of the Peter Jacyk Centre and the Director of the Church Studies Program at CIUS Press. He is the author of The Cossacks and Religion in Early Modern Ukraine (2001) (Ukrainian translation: 2006), Tsars and Cossacks: A Study in Iconography (2002), and Unmaking Imperial Russia: Mykhailo Hrushevsky and the Writing of Ukrainian History (2005).