Thomas Sikor is Senior Lecturer in the School of Development Studies at the University of East Anglia, UK. His research focuses on rural property and resource governance, with a geographical emphasis on post-socialist countries. He has authored more than 30 journal articles, is the editor of Public and Private in Natural Resource Governance (2008) and has guest-edited special issues of World Development (2009), Development and Change (2009), Forest Policy and Economics (2006) and Conservation and Society (2004).

Christian Lund is Professor in International Development Studies at Roskilde University, Denmark. He is the author of Local Politics and the Dynamics of Property in Africa (2008) and Law, Power, and Politics in Niger - Land Struggles and the Rural Code (1998). He is the editor and co-editor of Twilight Institutions: Public Authority and Local Politics in Africa (2007), and Negotiating Property in Africa (2002).