Thomas Rommel is the former Rector and Provost of Bard College Berlin, A Liberal Arts University, and served as Director of Programs at the American Academy in Berlin. He received his doctorate and Habilitation in Literary Studies at the University of Tübingen and was Professor of Literature at Jacobs University Bremen. His research interests include 18th-century thought with an emphasis on literature and economics, Romanticism and Liberal Arts education. He has written books on Lord Byron, on 18th-century literature and the history of ideas and an introduction to Adam Smith. His other books deal with plagiarism, canonical literature and methods in literary studies. He is Visiting Professor at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) in the Centre for Literary & Intermedial Crossings CLIC Research Group.

Helen Winter studied economics and Anglo-American regional studies at the University of Tübingen, Germany, and at Leeds University, UK. She worked in a project funded by the German Science Foundation (DFG) on global economics. Her Ph.D. thesis on industrial and trade policies of the EU was published as a book in 1994. Helen Winter taught economics at university level and published on Adam Smith. Having worked for the German Ministry of Economics she spent a year as economic advisor to the Permanent Mission of Germany at the United Nations in New York. She served as Head of Division G8/G20 Sherpa Office and was Deputy Director General "National and International Economic Policy" in the German Federal Chancellery. Helen Winter is Ambassador, Deputy Permanent Representative of the Federal Republic of Germany to the European Union in Brussels.