George Ritzer is Distinguished University Professor at the University of Maryland, with awards that include the American Sociological Association's Distinguished Contribution to Teaching Award. He is the author of numerous books including The McDonaldization of Society (1993; 2008), The Globalization of Nothing (2003; 2007) Globalization: A Basic Text (2010) and the editor of The Encyclopedia of Social Theory (2005), The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology (2007), The Blackwell Companion to Globalization (2007) and the forthcoming The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Globalization. His work has been translated into over twenty languages.

J. Michael Ryan is an award winning teacher who has held academic positions at top-ranked universities across five continents. He is currently an Associate Professor of Sociology at Nazarbayev University (Kazakhstan) and has previously held academic positions in Egypt, Portugal, Ecuador, and the USA. Before returning to academia, Dr. Ryan worked as a research methodologist at the National Center for Health Statistics (which is part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) in Washington, D.C. where he led multiple projects to improve national statistical survey methodology. He is the author (with Serena Nanda) of COVID-19: Social inequalities and human possibilities, and (co-)editor of more than 15 volumes.