Bhikkhu Analayo is a scholar of early Buddhism and a meditation teacher. He completed his PhD research on the Satipatthanasutta at the University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka, in 2000 and his habilitation research with a comparative study of the Majjhima Nikaya in the light of its Chinese, Sanskrit, and Tibetan parallels at the University of Marburg, Germany in 2007. His over five hundred publications are for the most part based on comparative studies, with a special interest in topics related to meditation and the role of women in Buddhism.

Alexandra Pappas is Professor and Raoul Bertrand Chair in Classics at San Francisco State University. She earned her PhD at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2003, and since then has held academic positions at the Universities of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Arkansas, and the Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington, DC (Harvard University). Outside of the present collaborative project, her research and publications have largely focused on the intermedial relationships between words and images in the ancient Greek world.