Dr. Robert A. Saunders is a Professor in the Department of History, Politics and Geography at Farmingdale State College-SUNY and a visiting researcher at the School of Communication and Culture – Media Studies, Aarhus University, Denmark, where he is working on a book about the politics of Nordic noir television series. He is the author of four books, including Popular Geopolitics and Nation Branding in the Post-Soviet Realm (Routledge, 2017). His research explores the changing nature of national, religious, and political identity in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

Vlad Strukov is Associate Professor in Film and Digital Culture at the University of Leeds, specialising in world cinemas, visual culture, digital media, intermediality, and cultural theory. He explores theories of empire and nationhood, global journalism and grassroots media, and consumption and celebrity by considering the Russia Federation and the Russian-speaking world as his case study. He is the founding and principal editor of the journal Studies in Russian, Eurasian and Central European New Media. He is the author of Contemporary Russian Cinema: Symbols of a New Era (2016), and other publications on film.