Rachel M. Gisselquist is Professor in Governance and Development, and Director of the Governance and Social Development Resource Centre (GSDRC), University of Birmingham (UK). She is also a non-resident senior research fellow with UNU-WIDER, where she was based 201124. Previously, she was a research director at Harvard University, where she co-authored the first several editions of the Ibrahim Index of African Governance, now a standard reference on governance. Her research examines issues of inequality, ethnic politics, state-building, foreign aid, governance, and democracy. She holds a PhD in Political Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an MPP from Harvard.

Patricia Justino is a development economist and a leading expert on political violence and development. She is currently UNU-WIDER's Deputy Director and Professorial Fellow (on leave) at the Institute of Development Studies, UK. She has led major research programmes funded by the European Commission, the UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), and the UK Department for International Development (DFID), and has advised several international organizations, including UN agencies and the World Bank. She holds a MPhil in Economics from Cambridge University and a PhD in Economics from London University. She has held visiting positions at Harvard University (200709) and the European University Institute (2017), among others.

Andrea Vaccaro is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford, and an associate member of St Antonys College. Previously, he was a visiting researcher at UNU-WIDER and a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Insubria. His research lies at the intersection of comparative politics and global development. He primarily studies the state and political regimes, their measurement, their interplay, and their relationship with human wellbeing, particularly in challenging situations like fragile contexts in the Global South and major crises like the COVID-19 pandemic. He received his PhD from the Sapienza University of Rome.