Peter Franks is a mediator with the Department of Labour. He has worked for trade unions as a journalist, researcher, administrator and advocate, including the Clerical Workers Association, the Seamens Union and the Council of Trade Unions. He is a former secretary of the Trade Union History Project and is a committee member of the Labour History Project. He has published numerous articles on New Zealand labour history and is the author of Print and Politics (2001).

Melanie Nolan is Professor of History, Director of the National Centre of Biography and General Editor of Australian Dictionary of Biography at the Australian National University. She taught New Zealand history at Victoria University of Wellington for 16 years, and is the author of Breadwinning: New Zealand Women and the State (2000) and Kin: A Collective Biography of a New Zealand Working-Class Family (2005). She is a member of the editorial boards of Labour History and the Labour History Review.