Nicholas Thomas is the head of the anthropology department at Goldsmiths' College, University of London, and the former director of the Centre for Cross-Cultural Research, Australia. Martin Fitzpatrick is a former senior lecturer at the department of history and Welsh history at the University of Wales-Aberystwyth and has been published widely on 18th-century literature. Jenny Newell is the assistant curator of the Pacific and Australian Collection in the Department of Ethnography at the British Museum.