Timur Dadabaev, PhD, is a Professor of International Relations and the Director of the Special Program for Japanese and Eurasian Studies at the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, University of Tsukuba, Japan. He published extensively His latest monographic books are Decolonizing Central Asian International Relations: Beyond Empires (Oxon: Routledge, 2021), Transcontinental Silk Road Strategies: Comparing China, Japan and Korea in Uzbekistan (Oxon: Routledge, 2019), Chinese, Japanese and Korean In-roads into Central Asia (Policy Studies Series, Honolulu: East-West Center 2019), Japan in Central Asia: Strategies, Initiatives, and Neighboring Powers (NY: Palgrave Macmillan 2016) and Identity and Memory in Post-Soviet Central Asia (Oxon: Routledge, 2015).

Marlene Laruelle is Director of the Institute for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies; Director of the Russia Program; Director of the Illiberalism Studies Program; Co-Director of PONARS Eurasia; and Research Professor of International Affairs at The George Washington University. She works on political, social, and cultural changes in the post-Soviet space. Marlene's research explores the transformations of nationalist and conservative ideologies in Russia, nationhood construction in Central Asia, as well as the development of Russia's Arctic regions.