Colin Flint is a Professor of Geography at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA researching geopolitics and militarization; author of Introduction to Geopolitics and co-author (with Peter Taylor) of Political Geography: World-Economy, Nation-State, and Locality.

Todd Robinson is a doctoral candidate in political science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, focusing on international relations.

Elizabeth Philipp is a global studies undergraduate student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and has interned with the Brookings Institute, Washington, D.C.