Zach Phil Schwartz is a researcher in International and World History with graduate qualifications from Columbia University in the City of New York and the London School of Economics and Political Science. 

His research interests include:

• Internationalism in the twentieth century and its interplay with right-wing and fascist politics
• Historical roots of global governance, transnational networks, and diplomatic cooperation
• Function of international institutions, norms, and international criminal law and legal procedure
• Italian and European political economy and history in the early- to mid-twentieth century

He received a Master of Arts in Global Studies and a Bachelor of Arts summa cum laude in International & Global Studies, Anthropology, and Italian Studies from Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts in 2019 and 2018, respectively. His undergraduate honors thesis, titled “Tracking Modern Migration into the Italian Republic,” received high honors in May 2018.

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Aidan Lilienfeld is the politics and science staff reporter at the Washington, DC, office of the leading Japanese daily paper The Asahi Shimbun.

He is also a researcher and perennial student of international and world history, with a BA in history from the University of Chicago (2017), an MA in international history from Columbia University (2022), and an MSc in international history from the London School of Economics (2022).

His research interests include (but are not limited to):

• US and British foreign affairs and influence in East Asia 1894-1914
• Interwar/pre-WWII diplomacy and naval and commercial policy in East Asia
• Borderlands and local history, and the philosophy of history
• Medieval German expansion into the Baltic Sea region, and medieval geopolitics

His bachelor’s thesis, titled “Solitary Refinement: Understanding Isolationism,” responded to 21st-century diplomatic/national isolationism with case studies of 19th-century isolationist policy in Japan and Great Britain. His master’s thesis, titled “City of London v. Strangers: Hanse Merchants and the Changing Political Economy of Elizabethan England,” explored the social and commercial relations of foreign merchants in Tudor England through a case study of the London Steelyard, the English outpost of the German Hanse merchant community.