Robert Lepenies studied philosophy, political science, and economics at the University of Oxford and international economic policy at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He was in the graduate program at the Berlin School of Transnational Studies (BTS) within the Dahlem Research School, and earned his doctorate in political science from the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin. From 2012 to 2013, he conducted research at Yale University as a Fulbright-Schuman Fellow. From 2013 to 2015, Lepenies was a Max Weber Postdoctoral Fellow at the European University Institute. He is currently an A.SK Postdoctoral Award Fellow at the Berlin Social Science Center (WZB) and teaches at the Institute of Philosophy at Freie Universität.

Liav Orgad studied law at the Radzyner School of Law at IDC Herzliya in Israel, Columbia Law School, and the Hebrew University. He is an assistant professor at the Radzyner School of Law at IDC Herzliya and lives and works in Berlin, where he first was a postdoctoral researcher nominated by Dahlem Research School and is currently continuing his research as a Marie Curie Fellow at the Department of Law at Freie Universität. For the 2015/16 academic year, he has received an invitation as a Fellow-in-Residence at the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University. His main fields of research are constitutional identity, nationality laws, comparative migration law, and legal theory.