Sarvani Gooptu is Professor of Asian Literary and Cultural Studies at Netaji Institute for Asian Studies, Kolkata, India. Her main areas of research are nationalism and culture in Asia. Among her publications are three books: The Actress in the Public Theatres of Calcutta (2015), The Music of Nationhood: Dwijendralal Roy of Bengal (2018), which received the Hiralal Award for Best Woman Historian at Indian History Congress 2019, and Knowing Asia, Being Asian, Cosmopolitanism and Nationalism in Bengali Periodicals 1860-1940 (2021) as well as two co-edited volumes. She is passionate about music and regularly performs in music programmes.

Mimasha Pandit is Assistant Professor in the Department of History at Mankar College, Purba Bardhaman, West Bengal, India. Her main areas of research are the history of ideas and their performance in the wider public sphere in colonial Bengal. Her PhD dissertation was published in 2019, titled Performing Nationhood:The Emotional Roots of Swadeshi Nationhood in Bengal, 1905-1912. Recently, she has contributed to Itihaaser Bitarka, Bitarker Itihaas (published in 2022) as well as to Transcultural Humanities in South Asia (2022), edited by Waseem Anwar and Nousheen Yousuf.