Ulrich Adelt is Professor of American Studies and Director of African American and Diaspora Studies at the University of Wyoming, Laramie. He is the author of Blues Music in the Sixties: A Story in Black and White (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2010) and Krautrock: German Music in the Seventies (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2016).

Jens Balzer lives in Berlin and writes for German weekly paper Die Zeit. His book publications include: Pop: Ein Panorama der Gegenwart (Berlin: Rowohlt, 2016), Pop und Populismus: Über Verantwortung in der Musik (Hamburg: Ed Körber, 2019), Das entfesselte Jahrzehnt: Sound und Geist der 70er (Berlin: Rowohlt, 2019), High Energy: Die Achtziger – das pulsierende Jahrzehnt (Berlin: Rowohlt, 2021), Schmalz und Rebellion. Der deutsche Pop und seine Sprache (Berlin: Dudenverlag, 2022), and Ethik der Appropriation (Berlin: Matthes & Seitz, 2022).

Marcus Barnes is a seasoned music journalist, copywriter, and author from London. He is the direct offspring of Jamaican soundsystem culture (his father was part of a Rastafarian soundsystem and his mother a fan). As the former techno editor at renowned music magazine Mixmag, he cultivated close ties to the global techno community, writing about, and investigating, the roots and wider cultural impact of electronic music extensively. Marcus has contributed to the Guardian, the Independent, Time Out, and the BBC, and also worked with Sony, Virgin Records, Atlantic, and many more major labels. His published works include Around the World in 80 Records Stores (London: Dog N Bone, 2018).

Alexander Carpenter is Professor of Music and Director of the Wirth Institute for Austrian and Central European Studies at the University of Alberta. A musicologist, music critic, and cultural historian, his research interests include popular music, Arnold Schoenberg and the Second Viennese School, film music, the intersections between music and psychoanalysis, and zombies in popular culture. At present, he is writing a monograph on the early history of gothic rock for Lexington Press.

Patrick Glen is Teaching Fellow in the School of Performance and Cultural Industries at the University of Leeds. He has held a fellowship in the Centre for Contemporary History at the University of Wolverhampton and previously worked at University College London and the University of Salford. He is the author of Youth and Permissive Social Change in British Music Papers, 1967–1983 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019) and is now writing a book on the social meanings and politics controversies surrounding British music festivals during the 1970s.

Pertti Grönholm is Adjunct Professor and University Lecturer in the Department of European and World History at the University of Turku. His research themes range from the politics of history and collective remembering, the history of utopia and dystopia, to the history of technology and pop music. As regards the last theme, Pertti has lectured and written journal articles and book chapters on Kraftwerk, Mika Vainio, Pan Sonic, and other makers of electronic pop and experimental music.

Alexander C. Harden is an independent researcher based in the United Kingdom. After studying electroacoustic composition at the University of Birmingham and developing a creative portfolio inspired by kosmische Musik techniques, he completed a PhD in narratology and popular music analysis at the University of Surrey. Alexander now focusses on areas of record production and early electronic popular musical practice and holds an International Association for the Study of Popular Music (UK & Ireland Branch) Andrew Goodwin Memorial Prize for his essay ‘A World of My Own’.

Jeff Hayton is Associate Professor of History at Wichita State University in Kansas. He has published numerous articles on popular culture, rock ’n’ roll and German history. He is the author of Culture from the Slums: Punk Rock in East and West Germany (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022). He is now working on a study of mountain climbing in East Germany called ‘Summits and Socialism: Mountaineering in the German Demo-cratic Republic, 1945–1990’.

Alexander Henkle studied English and philosophy at the University of Wyoming. His undergraduate thesis, ‘Revolutionary Desire: Nonsense in Language and Literature’, theorises nonsensicality and pitifully investigates Lewis Carroll, Tristan Tzara, and Gertrude Stein. He is pursuing an MA in English at the University of New Mexico, focussing on modernist and avant-garde literatures.

Jan-Peter Herbst is Reader in Music Production at the University of Huddersfield where he is Director of the Research Centre for Music, Culture and Identity (CMCI). His primary research area is popular music culture, in particular rock music and the electric guitar, on which he has published widely. Currently, Jan is undertaking a funded three-year project that explores how heaviness is created and controlled in metal music production. His editorial roles include IASPM Journal and Metal Music Studies, and he currently edits the Cambridge Companion to Metal Music and the Cambridge Companion to the Electric Guitar (with Steve Waksman).

Ryan Iseppi, PhD, is a writer and educator living in Detroit, Michigan. He is an alumnus of the University of Michigan, where he wrote about the relationship between Krautrock and the West German counterculture. He completed a Fulbright fellowship in Hamburg in 2013. He also previously hosted the Krautsider Music radio show on WCBN-FM Ann Arbor.

Michael Krikorian is Assistant Professor of Piano and Music Technology at California State University, Fresno. He holds a DMA in piano performance with additional minor fields in music theory, music composition, and scoring for visual media from the University of Southern California, an MM in Piano Performance from the Manhattan School of Music, and a BA in Piano Performance from CSU, Fresno. His collaborative research presentations have focussed on the demystification of contemporary pedagogical keyboard works and the use of popular music in applied music lessons for elementary to advanced level pianists. Michael composes for the concert stage and for visual media.

Heather Moore is a doctoral student at the University of Southern California, where she is pursuing a PhD in historical musicology. She holds a dual-emphasis MA in music history and literature, and piano pedagogy from California State University, Fullerton, as well as a BM in piano performance from Chapman University. Heather’s research revolves around the intersection of music and politics within twentieth-century Germany, with particular emphases on the German Democratic Republic and popular music of the Cold War era.

Sean Nye is Associate Professor of Practice in Musicology at the University of Southern California. His recent publications include Modeselektor’s ‘Happy Birthday!’ (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2022) for the 33 1/3 Europe series. His teaching and research encompass topics such as electronic music, hip-hop, German studies, and science fiction. Prior to joining the University of Southern California, Sean was a fellow in the Berlin Program for Advanced German and European Studies at the Free University of Berlin and a DAAD graduate fellow at the Humboldt University of Berlin.

David Pattie is Associate Professor in Drama and Theatre Arts at the University of Birmingham. He has published widely on the work of Samuel Beckett, contemporary theatre, Scottish theatre and popular music. He is the co-editor (with Sean Albiez) of Kraftwerk: Music Non-Stop (London: Continuum, 2012), Brian Eno: Oblique Music (London: Continuum 2016), and The Velvet Underground: What Goes On (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2022).

Sascha Seiler is currently Visiting Professor at the Department of World Literature, University of Mainz. He has published widely in the field of popular culture as well as Latin American and North American literature. His books include monographs on the influence of popular culture on German literature since the 1960s and the aesthetics of disappearance. Sascha has edited several volumes on different subjects like culture and terrorism or transatlantic literary relations, the most recent being on the German author Wolfgang Welt. He is currently writing a monograph on folk and occult horror in film, literature, and music.

Uwe Schu¨tte was Reader in German at Aston University, Birmingham (until Brexit) and is now Privatdozent at Göttingen University. He lives in Berlin and has edited some ten volumes and written more than fifteen monographs on contemporary German-language literature and German pop music, with a focus on W.G. Sebald and Kraftwerk. Recent publications include Annäherungen: Sieben Essays über W.G. Sebald (Cologne: Böhlau, 2019), Kraftwerk: Future Music from Germany (London: Penguin, 2020), W.G. Sebald: Leben und literarisches Werk (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2021), and GODSTAR: Die fünf Tode des Genesis P-Orridge (Meine: Reiffer, 2022).

Detlef Siegfried is Professor of History at Copenhagen University. His research focusses mainly on the twentieth century and the histories of West Germany and Europe, popular cultures and consumption, left-wing radicalism, intellectuals, and the history of historiography and social sciences. His publications include Time Is on My Side: Konsum und Politik in der westdeutschen Jugendkultur der 60er Jahre (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2006) and Modern Lusts: Ernest Borneman: Jazz Critic, Filmmaker, Sexologist (New York: Berghahn, 2020).

Alexander Simmeth, PhD, is a writer and educator based in Detroit, Michigan. He primarily works on popular cultures in Europe and the United States, focussing on music, film, and travel. His publications include the chapter ‘The Future Past: Reflections on the Role of History’, in Peter W. Lee’s volume Exploring Picard’s Galaxy: Essays on Star Trek: The Next Generation (Jefferson: McFarland, 2018) and Krautrock Transnational: Die Neuerfindung der Popmusik in der BRD, 1968–1978 (Bielefeld: Transcript, 2016).

David Stubbs is a journalist and author. He started working life at the UK music magazine Melody Maker, before going on to work for numerous publications including New Musical Express, Vox, the Guardian, The Wire and The Quietus, among many others. He has written a number of music books, including studies of Jimi Hendrix, Eminem, and Fear of Music: Why People Get Rothko But Don’t Get Stockhausen (London: Zero, 2009). He is also the author of Future Days: Krautrock and the Building Of Modern Germany (London: Faber, 2014) and Mars by 1980: The Story of Electronic Music (London: Faber, 2019). He lives in London.