Daniela Russ, born 1987, is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Toronto and the University of Guelph, Canada. Trained as a historical sociologist in Berlin, New York, and Bielefeld, she is currently working on her first book, Working Nature: Steam, Power, and the Making of the Energy Economy (1830-1980). Her research interests lie in historical epistemology, energy history and the critical theory of nature.

James Stafford, born 1988, is a postdoctoral researcher at the Research Training Group "World Politics" at Bielefeld University. A historian of Ireland, Britain and Europe since 1750, his first book, The Case of Ireland: Commerce, Empire and the European Order 1776-1848, is forthcoming with Cambridge University Press. He completed his Ph.D. in History at Cambridge University in 2016, and worked as a Lecturer in Modern History at St. Hugh's College, Oxford, before coming to Bielefeld in 2017.