Yitzhak Y. Melamed is the Charlotte Bloomberg Professor of Philosophy at Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of Spinoza's Metaphysics: Substance and Thought (Oxford 2013), and Spinoza's Labyrinths (Oxford, forthcoming). His research has been featured in the BBC (The World Tonight), LeMond, Ha'aretz, and Kan Tarbut (Israeli Cultural Radio).
Samuel Newlands is the Carl E Koch Professor of Philosophy and the chair of the Philosophy Department at the University of Notre Dame. He has published dozens of articles on early modern philosophy and has directed large research projects on hope and optimism and the problem of evil. He has also received two NEH fellowships, including to support work on his monograph Reconceiving Spinoza (OUP, 2018) and two new book projects in early modern studies.