Yiannis Kokosalakis is a guest researcher at Bielefeld University, Germany. He is the author of Building Socialism: The Communist Party and the Making of the Soviet System, 1921-1941 (2023).

Francisco J. LeiräCastiñeira is the Ramón y Cajal Fellow at Charles III University of Madrid, Spain. He is the author of Franco's Soldiers: Recruitment and Combat in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) (2023) and co¿editor of The Crucible of Francoism (2021).