Anna Artwinska is a Professor of Slavic Literature and Culture Studies and Chair of the Center for Women's and Gender Studies at the University of Leipzig, Germany. Her main research interests are the memory of communism, postcatastrophic representation of the Shoah, the concept of generation, auto/biographical writing and gender, and postcolonial studies.

Anja Tippner is a Full Professor of Slavic Literatures at Hamburg University. She works on concepts of documentation and life-writing as well as representations of the Shoah and extreme experiences in Russian, Polish, and Czech literature. Her current research focuses on documentary and (collaborative) life-writing after socialism.