Saturnino M. Borras Jr . is Canada Research Chair in International Development Studies at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He is part of the Initiatives in Critical Agrarian Studies (ICAS) at Saint Mary’s University. He is Adjunct Professor at the ChinaAgricultural University in Beijing, and a Fellow of the Transnational Institute in Amsterdam and Food First in Oakland. Publications include: Pro-Poor Land Reform: A Critique (2007), Transnational Agrarian Movements Confronting Globalization (2008) co-edited with M. Edelman and C. Kay, and Critical Perspectives in Rural Development Studies (2009). He is the Editor of the Journal of Peasant Studies. Email: sborras@smu.ca.

Ruth Hall is a Senior Researcher at the Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS) at the University of the Western Cape in South Africa. Her research interests include land and agrarian reforms, rural labour markets and farm worker rights, agricultural commodity chains, and the politics of rural development. She holds a Masters degree in Development Studies from the University of Oxford, where she is completing her doctoral studies. Publications include an edited volume entitled Another Countryside? Policy Options for Land and Agrarian Reform in South Africa and, with Lungisile Ntsebeza, The Land Question in South Africa: The Challenge of Transformation and Redistribution. She is Book Reviews Section Co-Editor of the Journal of Peasant Studies. Email: rhall@uwc.ac.za

Ian Scoones is a Professorial Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, UK. He has a background in agricultural ecology and his interdisciplinary research links the natural and social sciences and focuses on the relationships between science and technology, local knowledge and livelihoods and the politics of policy processes.  He has worked on issues such as pastoralism and rangeland management, soil and water conservation, biodiversity and environmental change, land and agrarian reform, dryland agricultural systems, crop biotechnology and animal health science policy, mostly in Africa. .  He is currently co-director of the ESRC Social, Technological and Environmental Pathways to Sustainability (STEPS) Centre at Sussex and Joint Convenor of the Future Agricultures Consortium. Key publications include: Science, Agriculture and the Politics of Policy: The Case fBiotechnology in India (Orient Longman, 2006) and Land Reform in Zimbabwe: Myths and Realities (James Currey, forthcoming, 2010). He is a member of the Editorial Collective of the Journal of Peasant Studies. Email: I.Scoones@ids.ac.uk.

Ben White is Professor of Rural Sociology at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS) and Professor of Social Sciences at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands. He has carried out research on the themes of agrarian change, social differentiation of the peasantry, contract farming, rural labour, land policies, among others, mainly in Indonesia. He has published extensively on these themes. For 17 years, he was Co-Editor of Development and Change, until mid-2009. Email: white@iss.nl.

Wendy Wolford is the Polson Professor of Development Sociology at Cornell University. Her research interests include the political economy of development, social movements, land distribution and agrarian societies. Key publications include To Inherit the Earth: the Landless Movement and the Struggle for a New Brazil (co-authored with Angus Wright, Food First Books, 2003) and This Land is Ours Now: Social Mobilization and the Meaning(s) of Land in Brazil (2010, Duke University Press). She is a member of the Editorial Collective of the Journal of Peasant Studies. Email: wwolford@email.unc.edu.