László Andor is currently the Secretary General of the Foundation for European Progressive Studies, Head of Department of Economic Policy at Corvinus University, Budapest, Senior Fellow at Hertie School of Governance, Berlin, and a visiting professor at ULB, Brussels as well as Sciences Po, Paris. Between 2010 and 2014, he was EU Commissioner for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion. Prior to that, from 2005 to 2010, he was a Member of the Board of Directors of the EBRD in London, representing the Czech Republic, Croatia, Hungary and Slovakia.

Chris King-chi Chan is a senior lecturer at the School of Business and Management of the Royal Holloway University of London. Prior to his relocation to the UK, he was an Associate Professor at the Department of Sociology and the Director of Center for Social Innovation Studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He had also taught at City University of Hong Kong from 2009 to 2018. His research focuses on labour, civil society, and social development in China and Asia. He is the author of 'The Challenge of Labour in China: strikes and the changing labour regime in global factories' (Routledge, 2010) and has published papers in journals such as Globalizations, Development and Change, British Journal of Industrial Relations, International Labor Review, China Quarterly and Journal of Contemporary Asia. Currently, he is researching employment relations in the platform economy.

Ágnes Gagyi is a sociologist, researching East European politics and social movements from the perspective of the region's long-term global integration. She is a researcher at the University of Gothenburg, and co-founder of the Solidarity Economy Center, Budapest. Her recent publications include 'The Political Economy of Middle Class Politics and the Global Crisis in Eastern Europe' (Springer, 2021), 'The Political Economy of Eastern Europe 30 years into the 'Transition'', co-edited with Ondrej Slacalek (Springer,  2021), and 'Contemporary Housing Struggles: A Structural Field of Contention Approach', co-written with Kerstin Jacobsson and Ioana Florea (Springer, 2022).

Thilo Lang is Head of Department at the Leibniz Institute for Regional Geography (IfL) in Leipzig, Germany, and lecturer at the Global and European Studies Institute at the University of Leipzig. He is a member of the Collaborative Research Center 1199 'Processes of Spatialisation under the Global Condition', and directs the research group 'Multiple Geographies of Regional and Local Development' at IfL. His research interests include polarization processes at multiple scales, innovation outside of agglomerations, local and regional development, with a focus on institutional change in ‘peripheral’ regions and alternative economies. Previously he held positions at the Leibniz Institute for Research on Society and Space and the Regional Development Agency ZukunftsAgentur Brandenburg GmbH as well as fellowships at the University of Sheffield, Durham University (UK) and a guest professorship for globalization and development at the Latvian University in Riga.

Mary N. Taylor is Assistant Director of the Center for Place, Culture, and Politics at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and part time faculty at the Design and Urban Ecologies program at Parsons/The New School. Her research sits at the intersection of anthropology, dialogical art, and urbanism.