Kawal Deep Kour holds a Ph.D. from the Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati. A drug abuse prevention specialist, she is currently Director of the South Asian Drugs and Addictions Research Council and a former board member of the International Society for the Study of Drug Policy (ISSDP). She is the author of History of Intoxication: Opium in Assam, 1800-1959 and many other publications.

Ralph G. Giordano is a professional architect born in New York. Recently retired to New Jersey, he has authored nine books on American culture and served as a series editor for six other innovative publications. Giordano is a member of the Authors Guild. He earned a master’s degree from the City University of New York and a bachelor’s degree in Architecture from the New York Institute of Technology. Giordano’s work has been featured in The New York Times and New York Daily News, among other publications. In 2007, he was honored with the prestigious Council of the Arts Humanities Award on Staten Island (COAHSI), recognizing his long commitment to the arts and humanities within New York City. Inducted into the College of Staten Island Alumni Hall of Fame, an additional honor came with the President’s Dolphin Award for Outstanding Service and Contribution to the College of Staten Island. Faculty Appreciation Awards for excellence in teaching came from Student/Athletes of Kean University in New Jersey and the Student/Athletes at the College of Staten Island (CUNY). He has taught as an adjunct professor in various disciplines of World History, American Studies, and Architecture at the College of Staten Island, Wagner College, Kean University, and Union County College. In 2011, he was featured in a BBC Radio documentary and has been guest on many other radio programs.

Henry F. Fradella is Professor in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Arizona State University, where he also holds affiliate appointments in law and in the interdisciplinary studies program on law and behavioral science. He received a B.A. in psychology from Clark University; a master’s in forensic science and a law degree from George Washington University; and his Ph.D. in justice studies from Arizona State University. He researches substantive and procedural criminal law, the dynamics of legal decision-making, and the consequences of changes in legal processes. His research has been funded by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute of Justice. He is the author or co-author of 12 books including Punishing Poverty: How Bail and Pretrial Detention Fuel Inequalities in the Criminal Justice System; Stop and Frisk: The Use and Abuse of a Controversial Police Tactic; Sex, Sexuality, Law, and (In)Justice; Mental Illness and Crime; Defenses of Excuse in American Law; a criminal law casebook; and four textbooks. He had written nearly 120 articles, book chapters, reviews, and scholarly commentaries. Dr. Fradella previously edited Criminology, Criminal Justice, Law & Society and the Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice. He has served as Editor-in-Chief of the Criminal Law Bulletin since 2019.

Emrah Akyüz is Associate Professor of Environmental Policy and Energy Politics at Bingol University, in Turkey, where he has taught since 2020. He completed his master’s degree at Edinburgh University with a thesis on “urban social movements” and received his Ph.D. from the University of Leeds with a thesis on the effects of the Fukushima and Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant accidents on human rights. Dr. Akyüz conducts scientific research on environmental and energy policy. His books include Nuclear Power and Human Rights in Japan: The Fallout of Fukushima, 100 Unknown Scientific Facts on Environmental Issues, Save the World: Clean Environment Scientific Secrets, ABC of Environmental Science: Environmental Issues and Policies for Beginners, Environment and Human Rights: A Study on Turkey, City and Urbanization with Its Different Dimensions (ed.), Environmental Justice, and Environmental Ethics and Spinoza (ed.), and Nuclear Energy: Perception or Reality?.

Leslie Gruis served at the National Security Agency for 30 years. Originally recruited as a mathematician with a Ph.D. from Northwestern University, Dr. Gruis was talent-spotted for her people and policy-setting skills and rapidly became a rising star. She ascended through the ranks, became the head of an organization that funded start-ups for classified applications, and then entered the high-level policy arena just as the intelligence community began to face unprecedented privacy challenges. These included the role of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court in targeting Americans and major changes to the intelligence community forced by the privacy revelations of whistle-blower Edward Snowden. Dr. Gruis’s long-standing interests in the rights of Americans and the American dream coalesced in a deep interest in privacy as a concept. She influenced intelligence community policy on privacy for the rights of Americans and wrote a number of classified policy documents on that subject. Upon retirement, Dr. Gruis began a second career writing about the privacy rights of the American public. She focused on what Americans are entitled to know and what can be done to protect them from exploitation by giant commercial organizations. Dr. Gruis is the author of Privacy: Past, Present, and Future. She also writes for traditional and online media, appears on radio and television, and gives frequent public appearances. Dr. Gruis lives in Maryland with her family.

James R. Russo is an independent researcher who holds graduate degrees from Louisiana State University and the University of Richmond. He has taught at those schools and at Tulane University. Russo’s primary scholarly interests are the cinema and comparative literature. He has recently published Film Nation: William Troy on the Cinema, 1933–1935; The Bookman: William Troy on Literature and Criticism, 1927–1950; Drama According to Alexander Bakshy, 1916-1946; Analyzing Film: A Student Casebook; Pillars of Society: Ibsen, Shaw, Brecht; and Open Hatch: The Theater Criticism of Robert Hatch, 1950-1970.

Ann G. Simonds is Professor Emerita of Anthropology at the University of Oregon, Eugene. She has published articles in various anthropological journals and extensively studied Franz Boas’s works on the Northwest Coast.

Richard L. Bland is a retired Arctic archaeologist and translator. He has translated over 250 articles and books, primarily from Russian and German, into English. Recent examples with Academica Press include The Peoples of Ancient Siberia: An Archeological History (by A. P. Okladnikov) and Warfare in the Russian Arctic (A. K. Nefedkin).

Don Dumond served as Director of the Museum of Natural History at the University of Oregon. He has more than 100 substantive publications in journals, plus fourteen authored or co-authored books.

David Roman was born in Madrid in 1973. After a long career as a foreign correspondent with the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg News, mostly in the Asia-Pacific region, he started work on Emperor Whisperers, his first non-fiction book. He is married with two children and currently lives in Washington, D.C.

Alexander Ross graduated from the University of Cambridge and studied at the ESCP Business School in Paris and Heidelberg University. He later moved to Los Angeles, where he worked in film for fifteen years before returning to the UK to obtain a Ph.D. from the University of East Anglia, as well as an M.A. in biographical writing. Ross recently contributed to an anthology of essays about the film Grease. He is presently based at New College, Oxford, and acts as a consultant to the EACEA (European Union Education, Audiovisual, and Culture Executive Agency MEDIA Program).

Editors: Dr. William Ehwarieme is Professor of Political Science and Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences at Ajayi Crowther University, in Nigeria. He obtained his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in political science from the University of Nigeria, Nsuka, in 1982 and 1988. He received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Ibadan in 2000. His research interests are in civil-military relations, ethnic politics, Niger Delta studies, governance, and comparative politics.

Dr. Nathaniel Umukoro is Professor of International Affairs, Peace Studies, and Conflict Transformation in the Department of Political Science at Western Delta University, Nigeria, where he is also Director of the Institute of Delta and Development Studies. He was a 2022 Humboldt fellow at the University of Bayreuth, Germany, and is currently a Senior Research Fellow at Point Alpha Research Institute, also in Germany. He completed his Ph.D. in peace and conflict studies at the University of Ibadan as a fellow of the Next Generation Social Sciences in the Africa Unit of the Social Science Research Council, New York.