Walter Baier
Coming from an anti-fascist family, he holds a Doctorate in Economy from the University of Vienna, and is the author of publications such as The Principle of Deception: From Grand Narratives to the New Language of Politics (2007), The Short Century – Communism in Austria (2009) and Marxism: History and Topics of a Practical Theory (2023). He was National Chairman of the Communist Party of Austria (KPÖ) from 1994 to 2006, and the editor of the Austrian magazine Volksstimme. Since 2000 he has worked on cultivating dialogue between atheists and Catholics through the project DIALOP, leading in recent years to meetings with Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis. From 2007 to 2022, he was a board member and political coordinator of the transform! europe network. In December 2022 he was elected President of the Party of the European Left. [baier@transform-network.net]
Una Blagojević
is an intellectual historian whose work has focused on the history of Marxist Humanism in socialist Yugoslavia and the Praxis circle. Her publications include the book chapter ‘The Cunning of Crisis and Yugoslav Marxist Revisionists’ (Routledge, 2024), ‘Phenomenology and Existentialism in Dialogue with Marxist Humanism in Yugoslavia in the 1950s and 1960s’ (Studies in East European Thought, 2022), ‘The Journal Praxis and Women Intellectuals’ (Contradictions, 2020), and, together with Adela Hîncu, ‘Productivity, the Humanization of Work, and the Future of Labor: Insights from Industrial Psychology in Late Socialist Yugoslavia and Romania’ (Labor History, 2024). She has also co-edited East Central European Crisis Discourses in the Twentieth Century: A Never-Ending Story? (Routledge, 2024) and Intellectual Production in Socialist Europe 1956–1968 (Brill, 2025). Currently, she is a researcher on the project Philosophy in Late Socialist Europe: Theoretical Practices in the Face of Polycrisis at Babeș-Bolyai University. [una.blagojevic@ubbcluj.ro]
Matthew Cole
is an Assistant Professor of Technology, Work and Employment, at the University of Sussex. He researches unpaid labour and technological change at work. He is a co-investigator at the ESRC Centre for Digital Futures at Work. Matthew is also on the editorial board of Work, Employment and Society. His book Unpaid: The Past, Present, and Future of Wage Theft will be published with Verso in May 2026. [m.r.cole@sussex.ac.uk]
Heide Gerstenberger
was formerly Professor of the Theory of State and Society at the University of Bremen. She is now retired. Her research, although covering a wide range of topics, has been centred on the development of capitalist states. She has also been engaged in the analysis of maritime labour. Originally published in 1990, among her main publications is Die subjektlose Gewalt. Theorie der Entstehung bürgerlicher Staatsgewalt (Westfälisches Dampfboot, 2017; third edition), which has been translated into English for the Historical Materialism Book Series as Impersonal Power: History and Theory of the Bourgeois State (Brill, 2007). In 2017 she published Markt und Gewalt. Die Funktionsweise des historischen Kapitalismus (Westfälisches Dampfboot), which has been translated into English for the Historical Materialism Book Series as Market and Violence: The Functioning of Capitalism in History (Brill, 2022). [gerstenb@uni-bremen.de]
Stefan Gužvica
is Assistant Professor at the Department of History, Higher School of Economics, Saint Petersburg, Russia. He researches the intellectual and political history of communism, with a particular focus on the agrarian question, nation-building, and the theories of uneven and combined development. He is currently completing work on the book Sickle Without a Hammer: Revolution, Development, and Nation-Building in the Balkans, 1900s–1930s (Forthcoming: Brill, 2026), based on the doctoral dissertation he defended at the University of Regensburg in 2022. He is the author of Before Tito: The Communist Party of Yugoslavia during the Great Purge, 1936–1940 (Tallinn University Press, 2020). [sguzvica@hse.ru]
Kaan Kangal
is Professor at the Philosophy Department of Nanjing University. He is primarily interested in Marx–Engels research, the history of MEGA1 and MEGA2, Young Hegelianism, classical German philosophy, and German Marxism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. His work on Marx’s Bonn Notebooks won the 2019 David Riazanov Prize. His most recent book is Friedrich Engels and the Dialectics of Nature (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020). He is currently working on the later Marx’s notebooks on agriculture, ecology, the natural sciences and communal property. [kaankangal@gmail.com]
John E. King
is Emeritus Professor of Economics at La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia. His principal research interests are in the history of economic thought, with special reference to Marxian economics and Post-Keynesian theory. [J.King@latrobe.edu.au]
Dunja Larise
is an independent scholar based in Vienna. She has held senior research positions at the EUI in Florence, Sciences Po in Paris and Yale University, among others. She has published essays in numerous journals, including Journal of Religion in Europe and Nationalities Papers, and edited collections on political economy, political theory and Marxist theory. She is the author of, most recently, Helene Bauer in Vienna: Political Economy Between Two World Wars (Brill, 2025). An edited volume, State Theory in Austromarxism: Max Adler, Hans Kelsen and Käthe Leichter, is forthcoming from Brill. [dunja.larise@eui.eu]
Alexis Moraitis
teaches International Political Economy at Lancaster University. His research focuses on the theories and historical evolution of capitalist governance, the political economy of crisis, and the future of work. His work has appeared in New Political Economy, Competition & Change, Geoforum and Critical Sociology. His book on the crisis of capitalist governance and the limits of liberalism is under contract with Manchester University Press. [a.moraitis@lancaster.ac.uk]
Engelbert Stockhammer
is professor of International Political Economy at King’s College London. His research areas include financialisation, macroeconomics, and economic policy. He is co-editor of the Review of Evolutionary Political Economy and has published more than 80 articles in peer-refereed journals including the Journal of International Money and Finance, Economic Modelling, Cambridge Journal of Economics, Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Journal of Post Keynesian Economics, British Journal of Industrial Relations, Environment and Planning A, and New Political Economy. His books include Wage-Led Growth: An Equitable Strategy for Economic Recovery (2013) and A Modern Guide to Keynesian Economics and Economic Policies (2011). [engelbert.stockhammer@kcl.ac.uk]
Benjamin Tetler
is an independent scholar and a support worker for adults with learning difficulties and mental-health concerns. He received his PhD in Politics from the University of York in 2023. He is the author of Marx’s Not-Capital: Labour and the Contemporary Critique of Political Economy (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024). [btetler@gmail.com]
