Mary J. Hickman is Professor of Irish Studies and Sociology and Director of the Institute for the Study of European Transformations at London Metropolitan University. Her research has particularly examined the uneven processes by which Irish emigrants and their children have become integrated into the societies in which they have settled and the consequences for their identities in comparison with other immigrant groups. In 1997, she co-authored Discrimination and the Irish Community in Britain for the Commission for Racial Equality. She was a member of the Irish Government's Task Force on Policy regarding Emigrants (2001-2) and provided written submissions for The Runnymede Trust Commission on a Multi-Ethnic Britain in 1999.

Piaras Mac Éinrí was Director from 1997-2003 of the inter-disciplinary Irish Centre for Migration Studies (ICMS), at University College Cork, focusing on Irish and comparative international migration research. He is an adviser to the Dublin-based Immigrant Council of Ireland and a member of the National Consultative Committee on Racism and Interculturalism. He has lectured and published extensively in the fields of Irish and comparative migration studies, with a particular interest in immigration and integration issues. He is a Geography lecturer at the university and previously served in the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs, with postings in Brussels, Beirut and Paris.