Detlef Pech, Dr. phil. habil., was born in 1970, and has been professor for primary education and general studies in primary education (Sachunterricht) at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin since 2008. His research focuses on learning about history and politics with children, historical awareness, impact of imaginations, and inclusion and didactic. Since 2016, he is the director of the Professional School of Education at the Humboldt-Universität.

Since 2008, Detlef Pech is editor at the advisory board of the online journal www.widerstreit-sachunterricht.de. He was member of the board at the Society for Science Education (GDSU) (2007-2012) and is still GDSU state representative for Berlin and mentor for the promotion of young academics in the field of science education, including conference management of the GDSU's annual PhD thesis conferences. He is member of the Centre for Transdisciplinary Gender Studies and the Interdisciplinary Centre for Educational Research at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Among his over 50 publications he published on Interdisciplinary Contributions to Inclusion Research, Interdisciplinary Primary Education, and on communication in science education. You can follow Detlef Pech via Twitter @hcep_d and get more information on his Websites https://hu-berlin.de/su/ and www.detlef-pech.de.

Daniel Feldman is lecturer of English literature at Bar-Ilan University in Israel, where he specializes in Holocaust literature and children’s literature. His primary area of research is the portrayal of traumatic historic events in texts for young readers. He also writes about comparative depictions of the Holocaust in literary prose and poetry in Hebrew, German, Yiddish, English, and Polish. His articles on children’s literature about the Holocaust have appeared in The Lion and the Unicorn, Children’s Literature, and the Children’s Literature Association Quarterly. His 2014 article on the prevalence of children’s games and play in works of fiction about the Holocaust written for children and young adolescents was honored by the Children’s Literature Association (ChLA). His scholarship on children’s play under conditions of war has also been recognized by the Huizinga Research Institute in the Netherlands and published in the American Journal of Play. He has won additional awards and grants as an outstanding emerging scholar and individual researcher from ChLA and the Israel Science Foundation as well as fellowships from the European Studies Research Council and Yad Vashem. In 2020 he will participate as a faculty member in the Children’s Literature Summer School at the University of Antwerp. Dr. Feldman visited Berlin often in the late 1990s and early 2000s in association with the Ronald S. Lauder Foundation as an educator in programs devoted to reconstituting European Jewish communities affected by Communism. He most recently traveled to Berlin in 2018 as a speaker in the Lisa Tetzner Lectures, an international forum for research in children’s literature convened by Humboldt University.

Melanie Ramdarshan Bold is an Associate Professor at University College London, where she teaches and researches topics related to Publishing/Book Cultures. Her main research interest centres on the contemporary (21^st Century) history of authorship, publishing, and reading, with a focus on children's and YA books. 

Melanie is an expert in inclusive youth literature and has published widely on the topic; alongside numerous publications about contemporary book culture. Her book Inclusive Young Adult Fiction: Authors of Colour in the United Kingdom, 2006-2016, was published by Palgrave in 2019. Some of the results of this research project have appeared in the Guardian. Cambridge University Press will publish her forthcoming book, Book Trade Activism and Anthologies: Advocating for Change in the UKYA Market, in 2020. Melanie has also co-authored a Publishing Studies textbook ' The Publishing Business: A Guide to Starting Out and Getting on', which Bloomsbury published in 2018.

Melanie works in collaboration with the BookTrust, the UK's largest children's reading charity, to examine the representation of children’s authors and illustrators of colour, published in the UK, and explore ways of better supporting them. The first (2007-2017) report - Representation of people of colour among children’s book authors and illustrators can be found - and downloaded, here. The statistics are also summarised here. The second report (2018-19) will be published in 2020. Additionally, Melanie is currently working on an interdisciplinary research project, Adolescent Identities, which investigates how YA reflects the realities of minoritised readers in the United Kingdom. The project has been working closely with schools, libraries, and bookshops; hosting reading groups and focus groups with teenagers across the country; and engaging with the wider YA and bookish community online. 

Melanie is the editor of the book series: 'Young Adult Publishing' (Cambridge University Press), as well as the guest editor for a number of special editions including the “#ReflectingRealities and Inclusive Youth Literature in the U.K." edition of The Lion and the Unicorn (2020). Melanie's connection to inclusive youth literature extends beyond academia: she was a judge on the UKYA Book Prize in 2018, and is on the Advisory Boards for the CLPE Reflecting Realities project, the Pop-up Pathways into Children’s Publishing project, and the CILIP Carnegie & Kate Greenaway Children’s Book Awards. She has also written articles for non-academic publications such as Pen&Inc, a magazine that celebrates diversity and inclusion in Children's Publishing, and English 4-11, a United Kingdom Literacy Association (UKLA) publication.

Prof. Dr. Maureen Maisha Auma is an Educator, Gender Studies Scholar, and Activist. She is Professor for Childhood and Difference (Diversity Studies) at the University for Applied Sciences, Magdeburg- Stendal, since April 2008. She was a Visiting Professor at the Centre for Transdisciplinary Gender Studies and the Institute of Education at the Humboldt University Berlin from 2014 to 2019. She is currently a Visiting Professor at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Gender Studies of the Technical University Berlin. Maisha has been active in the Black queer-feminist collective “Generation Adefra, Black Women in Germany” since 1993. Her research focuses on: diversity, inequality, and plurality in textbooks and didactical materials in East and West Germany, intersectional sexual education as empowerment for Black communities and communities of color, critical whiteness, intersectionality, decoloniality, and critical race theory. Together with Peggy Piesche and Katja Kinder she carried out a consultation process in cooperation with the LADS, the State Agency for Equal Treatment and Against Discrimination for the State of Berlin in 2018. The project was entitled: „Making Visible the Discrimination and Social Resilience of People of African Heritage in Berlin.“ s It was a project within BLACK BERLIN, the UN-Decade for People of African Heritage 2015 - 2024.

Sonja Eismann is co-editor and founder of the feminist Missy Magazine and lives and works in Berlin. She studied Comparative Literature,  English and French at the Universität Wien (Austria), Universität Mannheim (Germany), Université Dijon (France) and University of California (USA). Since the end of the 1990s she is working as an author at the interface of feminism and popculture. In 1999 Sonja Eismann co-founded in Vienna the magazine nylon. KunstStoff zu Feminismus und Popkultur, in 2007 she edited a reader titledHot Topic. Popfeminismus heute and founded together with Stefanie Lohaus und Chris Köver the Missy Magazine in 2008. In 2012 Sonja Eismann published the reader absolute fashion and, together with her Missy-colleagues Chris Köver und Daniela Burger, Mach's selbst. Do It Yourself für Mädchen, Glückwunsch, du bist ein Mädchen (2013) und Hack’s selbst (2015). Aditional book publications followed, recently Wie siehst du denn aus? Warum es normal nicht gibt (2020). In texts, workshops, presentations and lectures she engages in current feminist discourses, the representation of gender in pop culture and theories of fashion.

Sonja Matheson is Executive Director and Programme Director of Baobab Books, an independent children’s book publisher with an international profile based in Basel/Switzerland.

After a degree in publishing and a number of years working as a journalist, Sonja Matheson was a Project Director and Executive Committee Member of the NGO terre des hommes Switzerland from 1998 to 2004 and has complemented her working experience with a Certificate of Advanced Studies in Intercultural Mediation at the University of Lucerne in Switzerland. In her role as Programme Director of Baobab Books she has commissioned and edited about 50 translated books from all over the world; authored practical guidelines for teachers, librarians and community workers and run trainings and workshops on promotion of reading skills, literacy and publishing in Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America.