Robert Adlington is Head of Research at the Royal College of Music. He previously held professorships at the University of Nottingham and the University of Huddersfield. He is the author of books on Harrison Birtwistle, Louis Andriessen, and avant-garde music in 1960s Amsterdam, and editor of volumes on music and communism, new music theatre, and music and democracy. Between 2012 and 2015 he was co-editor of Twentieth-Century Music.

Igor Contreras Zubillaga is Juan de la Cierva (Incorporación) Research Fellow at the Complutense University of Madrid. His research focuses on the relationship between music and politics in Francoist and post-Francoist Spain. His books include the monograph ‘Tant que les révolutions ressemblent à cela’. L'avant-garde musicale sous Franco (Éditions Horizons d'Attente, 2021), and the edited volumes Composing for the State: Music in Twentieth-Century Dictatorships (Routledge, 2016), À l'avant-garde! Art et politique dans les années 1960 et 1970 (Peter Lang, 2013), and Le son des rouages. Représentations des rapports homme-machine dans la musique du 20e siècle (Éditions Delatour France, 2011).

Tim Howell is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Music at the University of York, having recently retired after thirty-five years there. His research specializes in the analysis of new music, especially from Finland, and he is an internationally recognized authority on the orchestral works of Sibelius. Over time, his interests have broadened to encompass contemporary Finnish music, see After Sibelius: Studies in Finnish Music (Ashgate, 2006) and Kaija Saariaho: Visions, Narratives, Dialogues (Ashgate, 2011), issues of musical timescale, ‘Musical Narratives: Studies in Time & Motion’, Contemporary Music Review (33/4, 2014), and most recently to engage with music from the wider Nordic region, The Nature of Nordic Music, (Routledge, 2019). He is currently working on a study of the latest generation of composers in Finland, Beyond Sibelius: Finnish Music Today, scheduled for publication in 2026.

Lauren Istvandity is a lecturer within the School of Business and Creative Industries at the University of the Sunshine Coast, Australia and a researcher in popular music heritage and memory studies. She works between communities, artists, and archives to produce new knowledge and innovative academic and creative outcomes. She is the author of The Lifetime Soundtrack: Music and Autobiographical Memory (Equinox, 2019), and co-author of Curating Pop: Exhibiting Popular Music in the Museum (Bloomsbury, 2019).

Elaine Kelly is Professor of Music at the University of Edinburgh. Her research focuses on music and politics in the GDR and East Germany. She has published in journals such as the Journal of the American Musicological Society, Twentieth-Century Music, and Opera Quarterly, and she is author of Composing the Canon in the German Democratic Republic: Narratives of Nineteenth-Century Music (OUP, 2014). She is currently a Leverhulme Major Research Fellow and is writing a monograph on musical relations between the GDR and the postcolonial world.

Jung-Min Mina Lee is an instructor in the Asian and Middle Eastern Studies Department at Duke University (Durham, NC), where she teaches courses on music in contemporary Korea and Korean popular music (K-pop). She earned her PhD in musicology from Duke University and a Master's degree in piano performance from the Manhattan School of Music. Her research has centred around the intersections of music, politics, and national identity as well as the avant-garde music of East Asian composers.

Anna Papaeti is Research Associate Professor at the University of Cyprus and the Principal Investigator of the ERC Consolidator Grant Soundscapes of Trauma: Music, Sound, and the Ethics of Witnessing (MUTE). She earned her PhD at King's College London. She writes about opera and musical theatre, the nexus of music, sound, and trauma, as well as the interactions of politics, ethics, and aesthetics. She held two Marie Skłodowska Curie Fellowships at the University of Goettingen (FP7, 2011–14) and at Panteion University, Athens (2017–19, Horizon 2020), respectively. Her research has been supported by DAAD, the Onassis Foundation, and the Centre for Research for the Humanities, Athens. She has published widely in collected volumes and scholarly journals, and has co-edited two special issues on music torture and music in detention. She is also a research-based art practitioner, working in sound and textual forms.

Daniel Party is Associate Professor at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, where he holds a joint appointment in the College and the Music Institute. He has held visiting positions at the University of Texas at Austin, Tulane University, Brown University, University of Oregon, and University of Georgia. He received his PhD in Music History from the University of Pennsylvania, and a BA (Classical Guitar) from Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. His research interests include popular music and culture of the Americas and Spain, the intersection of music, gender and sexuality, and music and social movements. He is currently principal investigator of the project Gender Performance in the Music of Víctor Jara, a three-year study (2022–5) funded by the Chilean Ministry of Science, Technology, Knowledge, and Innovation.

Juliana M. Pistorius is a Skłodowska-Curie Global Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Studies, University College London, and the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. Her research centres around opera in apartheid and post-apartheid South Africa, and incorporates interests in voice, race, and the politics of anti- and post-colonial representation.