Robert Eaglestone works on contemporary and twentieth century literature, literary theory and philosophy at Royal Holloway, University of London. His publications include Ethical Criticism: Reading after Levinas (Edinburgh University Press 1997), Doing English (Routledge 1999, 2nd ed 2002), Postmodernism and Holocaust Denial (Icon 2001), The Holocaust and the Postmodern (Oxford University Press 2004) and articles on Emmanuel Levinas, Jacques Derrida, Giorgio Agamben, Samuel Beckett, Angela Carter, Salman Rushdie, Imre Kertész, J. R. R. Tolkien, ethics, science, the Holocaust, archaeology and historiography. He has written for the TLS, The Independent and The Guardian. He is a Literary Advisor to the British Council. He is the series editor of Routledge Critical Thinkers.

Sean Matthews joined the School of English Studies at the University of Nottingham in February 2005, moving from the School of Literature and Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia, where he was Director of Teaching. His primary interests are in modern and contemporary literature and theory, and he is the Director of the D.H. Lawrence Research Centre. He has previously held positions at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth; University of California, Los Angeles; and Kyushu University, Japan. He is currently writing projects involving Raymond Williams and the New Left; the contemporary British novel; and a revisiting of I. A. Richards's Practical Criticism. For the last three years Sean has co-chaired the Oxford Conference.

Susanna Nicklin joined the British Council from English PEN, the international writers’ association which promotes free expression, literature and literacy. In her time as Director of PEN she worked with many English authors on events, on a children’s literature initiative and on campaigning for writers’ rights both at home and abroad; she also inaugurated a new programme, Writers in Translation, which supports the English translation and marketing of foreign language books that uphold the tenets of the PEN charter. Before that, she worked as an international literary agent, selling rights to publishers worldwide.