Dr. Jessica Pisano is a Professor of Politics at the New School for Social Research in New York City. She writes and teaches about contemporary and twentieth-century politics and economy in Eastern Europe. Her books Staging Democracy (Cornell University Press, 2022) and prize-winning The Post-Soviet Potemkin Village (Cambridge University Press, 2008) are based on her long-term research in communities along Ukraine's borders with Russia and the EU. She is working on a book about a single street in Eastern Europe under fascism, state socialism, and neoliberal democracy. Pisano has written for Politico on the timing of Russia's full-scale war, and her series of articles on American impeachment and Ukrainian and Russian politics appeared in The Washington Post. Pisano's work on the anti-polarization artistry of Volodymyr Zelenskyy has appeared in The Journal of Democracy and Politico Magazine, among others. Having served in institutional roles in academia in Russia and Ukraine throughout her career, she is now a trustee of the Ukrainian Kharkiv Karazin University Foundation.

Dr. Henry Hale is a Professor of Political Science and International Affairs, Director of the Institute for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies, and Director of the Petrach Program on Ukraine. He has spent extensive time conducting field research in post-Soviet Eurasia and is currently working on identity politics and political system change, with a special focus now on public opinion dynamics in Russia and Ukraine. His work has won two prizes from the American Political Science Association and he was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship for his research in Russia in 2007-2008. He is also chair of the editorial board of Demokratizatsiya: The Journal of Post-Soviet Democratization.