Robert B. Kaplan is Emeritus Professor of Applied Linguistics at the University of Southern California. He has published numerous books and articles in refereed journals and written several special reports to government both in the US and elsewhere. He is the founding Editor-in-Chief of the Annual Review of Applied Linguistics and is a member of the editorial board of the 1st and 2nd editions of the Oxford International Encyclopedia of Linguistics (2002). Additionally, he edited the Oxford Handbook of Applied Linguistics.  He has served as President of the National Association for Foreign Students Affairs, of TESOL, and of the American Association for Applied Linguistics.

Richard B. Baldauf, Jr is Associate Professor of TESOL in the School of Education at the University of Queensland and a member of the Executive of the International Association of Applied Linguistics (AILA). He has published numerous articles in refereed journals and books. He is co-editor of Language Planning and Education in Australasia and the South Pacific (Multilingual Matters, 1990), principal researcher and editor for the Viability of Low Candidature LOTE Courses in Universities (DEET, 1995) and co-author with Robert B. Kaplan of Language Planning from Practice to Theory (Multilingual Matters, 1997) and Language and Language-in-Education Planning in the Pacific Basin (Kluwer, 2003). He is co-author with Zhao Shouhui of Planning Chinese Characters: Evolution, Revolution or Reaction (Kluwer, 2007).