Shamiran Mako is Assistant Professor of International Relations at the Pardee School of Global Studies, Boston University. A political scientist specializing in state formation and statebuilding, civil wars, ethnic and identity politics of the Middle East and North Africa, she is an editor of State and Society in Iraq: Citizenship under Occupation, Dictatorship and Democratization (2017) and her work has appeared in the Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding, International Journal of Minority and Group Rights, and Transitional Justice and Forced Migration: Critical Perspectives from the Global South (2019), among others.
Valentine M. Moghadam is Professor of Sociology and International Affairs at Northeastern University where she specializes in the sociology, political economy, and gender politics of the Middle East and North Africa. She is the author of four books, including the award-winning Globalizing Women: Transnational Feminist Movements (2005), along with nine edited volumes and numerous journal articles and book chapters. In addition to her academic career, she has been a Senior Research Fellow at the United Nations University's WIDER Institute in Helsinki, Finland, and a section chief in the Social and Human Sciences Sector of UNESCO, Paris.