Jon Abbink works as a senior researcher at the African Studies Centre, Leiden, and as a research professor at VU University, Amsterdam. His interests are political anthropology, ethno-history, and culture and religion in the Horn of Africa (Ethiopia, Somalia). Current research projects are on Ethiopian regional history and livelihoods, the rhetoric and practice of ‘development’, and religion and community formation in Northeast Africa.

Sebastian Elischer, Ph.D. (2010) in Comparative Politics, Jacobs University Bremen, is assistant professor of comparative politics at the University of Florida. He is the author of Political Parties and Ethnicity in Africa (Cambridge University Press, 2013). He has published on institutional change, identities and democratization in Africa.

Andreas Mehler, Ph.D. (1993) in Political Science, University of Hamburg, is Director of the Arnold Bergstraesser Institute and Professor of Political Science at the University of Freiburg. He has published extensively on democratisation processes and violent conflicts in West and Central Africa. With Henning Melber he is managing editor of Africa Spectrum.

Henning Melber, Ph.D. (1980) in Political Science, University of Bremen, is Director emeritus of the Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation and Senior Research Fellow of The Nordic Africa Institute in Uppsala, Sweden; Extraordinary Professor at the Department of Political Sciences, University of Pretoria, and the Centre for Africa Studies, University of the Free State. He has published extensively on Southern Africa and in particular Namibia. With Andreas Mehler he is managing editor of Africa Spectrum.