Contributors

Hans van de Ven is an authority on the history of 19th and 20th century China. At the University of Cambridge he serves as Professor of Modern Chinese History. He is a Fellow of the British Academy and the author of Breaking with the Past: The Chinese Maritime Customs Service and Global Origins of Modernity in China, War and Nationalism in China: 1925-1945 and From Friend to Comrade: The Founding of the Chinese Communist Party, 1920-1927. The Battle for China, a book of essays he co-edited, received the 2012 Distinguished Book Award of the Society for Military History.

Jean-Pierre Vernant was a French historian and anthropologist, specialising in ancient Greece. Heavily influenced by Claude Lévi-Strauss, he applied structuralist theory to Greek tragedy, myth and society. He died in 2007.

Hana Videen has been hoarding Old English words since 2013, when she began tweeting one a day. Now over 20,000 people follow her for these daily gems from her wordhord. After her Old English doctorate at King's College London, she is now a writer and blogger in Canada, translating curiosities of history into engaging narratives.

Follow Hana on Twitter: @OEWordhord
And visit her website: www.oldenglishwordhord.com

Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) was an Italian painter, sculptor, architect, musician, engineer and scientist. His many works of genius include The Last Supper and the Mona Lisa.

Mark van Vugt is professor of psychology at the VU University of Amsterdam and holds honorary positions at the Universities of Oxford and Kent in the UK.

Frans de Waal was a Dutch-American primatologist and ethologist. Named as one of Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People, he is the author of Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?, among many other works. He was also the C. H. Candler Professor in Emory University's Psychology Department and director of the Living Links Center at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center. He lived in Atlanta, Georgia and died in 2024.

Shaun Walker is an international correspondent for The Guardian. He reported from Moscow for more than a decade and is the author of The Long Hangover: Putin's New Russia and the Ghosts of the Past. His coverage of Russia's war in Ukraine was shortlisted for the Foreign Reporter of the Year category at the British 2023 Press Awards, and he has appeared as a commentator on Russia and Ukraine for various television and radio programmes. He currently divides his time between Warsaw, Kyiv and London.

Emily Usher is an author and award-winning short story writer, originally from West Yorkshire. She gained a 1st Class BA Honours Degree in Media and Performing Arts at the University of Salford and went on to live in Sheffield and London before relocating to Australia.

Emily also works as a freelance writer specialising in the not-for-profit sector, and teaches creative writing in prisons and secure centres.

Emma Jane Unsworth is an award-winning novelist and screenwriter. Her first novel, Animals, now a major motion picture, for which Unsworth wrote the screenplay. The film premiered at Sundance Film Festival 2019. She also writes for television and various magazines. Her latest novel, Adults, has been heralded 'hilarious' (Dolly Alderton), 'tender' (Jessie Burton) and 'dazzling' (Marian Keyes) and is a Sunday Times bestseller.

Cathi Unsworth began a career in journalism at nineteen on the music weekly Sounds, and has since worked for many music, arts, film and alternative lifestyle journals. She is the author of four other novels, Weirdo[9781846687938] The Not Knowing [9781852428921], The Singer [9781846686405] and Bad Penny Blues[9781846686788], and the editor of the award-winning crime compendium London Noir, all published by Serpent's Tail. She lives in London.

V.L. Valentine is a senior science editor at National Public Radio in Washington, D.C., where she has led award-winning coverage of global disease outbreaks including Ebola and the Zika virus. She has a master's in the history of medicine from University College London and her non-fiction work has been published by NPR, The New York Times, The Smithsonian Channel and Science Magazine. She is the author of two novels, The Plague Letters and Begars Abbey.

Dr Merritt Turetsky is an internationally acclaimed climate scientist, renowned for her research and teaching on bogs. She's published hundreds of scientific articles on bogs' importance to global climate and provides counsel to governments, northern communities, and professional networks from around the world to better understand the importance of bogs to the global climate. Turetsky is a founding member and advisory board member of the international Permafrost Carbon Network, an advisor to NASA's Arctic Boreal Vulnerability Experiment, and from 2020-2022 she was named a Web of Science's Highly Cited Researcher. In addition to her published academic research, Dr Turetsky serves as the science advisor to the magazine EOS, has written for The Conversation, and regularly appears on TV including on CNN, PBS Newshour, BBC, and her own science program on Canada's CTV.