Dorothy Roberts, Professor at the Law School at Northwestern University. She also teaches in the fields of sociology and Afro-American studies at the Institute for Policy Research and the Centre for Poverty Research. She has done extensive work on the reciprocal relationship between gender, race and class in the area of jurisdiction and, in particular, within the context of motherhood.
Dorothy Roberts has published diverse books including "Shattered Bonds: The Color of Child Welfare" (2002) and "Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction and the Meaning of Liberty" (1997), for which she received the 1998 Myers Center Award for the Study of Human Rights in North America. She has also co-authored case studies on constitutional law and on women and law. Furthermore, she has published over fifty articles and essays in books and specialist journals.
Dorothy Roberts is currently analysing the meaning of race in relation to the political and practical dimensions of childcare. She researches injustice in the treatment of Black families in state childcare programmes, showing the existence of racist structures in these institutions and underscoring the effects that state intervention has on family life and communities.

Paul Gilroy, British sociologist and cultural theorist. Since 1999, Paul Gilroy, British sociologist and cultural analyst, has been Professor of Sociology and African American Studies at Yale University. He was previously Professor of Sociology and Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths´ College at the University of London. Paul Gilroy is the chief conceptual adviser to the Black Atlantic projects at the House of World Cultures.
His book The Black Atlantic, Modernity and Double Consciousness, which appeared in 1993, made him one of the most important voices calling for a change in paradigms – between modernity and trans-nationalism - within European thought. His works, which include There ain’t no Black in the Union Jack (1987), Small Acts: Thoughts on the Politics of Black Cultures (1993), Between camps: nations, cultures and the allure of race (2000), are pioneering attempts to reassess the role played by Black cultures within the context of European cultural policy and practice. His publications have contributed towards the emergence of a Black arts scene in Great Britain. Paul Gilroy is an established music expert and critic. He is currently working on Real Time, a story of black music in the second half of the twentieth century. His latest book After Empire: Multiculture or Postcolonial Melancholia will be published this summer. His works have been translated into ten languages.