Rebecca Jean Emigh is Professor of Sociology at UCLA. She is a comparative historical sociologist who specializes in long-term social change, and her research explores how cultural, economic, and demographic factors intersect to create these processes. She uses historical perspectives and mixed methods, emphasizing a "view from below" to understand how ordinary people shape social relations and the course of history. Emigh is the author of multiple prize-winning articles and books on a range of topics, including capitalism, censuses, social theory, and historical demography. She is the past chair of the Comparative-Historical Section of the American Sociological Association and current chair of the ASA Theory Section.

Richard Lachmann was Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Albany. He authored several books, most recently First Class Passengers on a Sinking Ship. His books have won multiple awards, including the 2003 American Sociological Association's Distinguished Scholarly Publication Award for Capitalists in Spite of Themselves. He was a Fulbright Teaching Fellow at ISCTE, University of Lisbon in 2012 and returned to teach a mini-course in Portugal each year until his death in 2021.

David M. McCourt is a professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of California, Davis, which he joined in 2014 from the University of Sheffield, where he was a Lecturer in Politics. He completed his doctoral work at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy, and between 2011-2012 was a Visiting Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Centre for British Studies at the University of California, Berkeley.