Abel Polese is a Senior Research Fellow at Dublin City University, Ireland. He is a writer, development worker, scholar, amateur photographer and musician who is mainly interested in the dichotomy between formal and informal modes and structures of governance. He is the author of The Scopus Diaries and the Illogics of Academic Survival (2018).

Ruth Hanau Santini is Assistant Professor of Politics and International Relations at Università L’Orientale in Naples, Italy, and Associate Fellow at the Middle East, Central Asia and Caucasus Studies’ Institute at the University of St. Andrews, UK. She is interested in the domestic and international politics of the MENA region and, more broadly, in state-society relations, citizenship, and changing understandings of democracy. Her work includes Limited statehood in post-revolutionary Tunisia. Citizenship, economy and security (2018).