Monica Mincu received her Ph.D. in Comparative Education from Catholic University, Milan, Italy in 2002. She is an Affiliated Lecturer at the Centre for Educational Leadership, Institute of Education, University College London. She is also an associate professor at the University of Torino, Italy. Her research topics mainly focus on Education Politics, Governance, and School Leadership; Teacher Education in Europe; and Learning, Inclusion, and Equity in Education.

Aly Colman is a lecturer in Educational Leadership at the UCL Institute of Education, working within the Centre for Educational Leadership. In addition to postgraduate teaching and supervision, she is the Programme Leader for the MA Educational Leadership (In-service/Teach First routes) and Co-Academic Head of Learning and Teaching for the Department of Learning and Leadership. Her academic interests include education leadership, school inspection, policy enactment, and social inequality and its impact on education.

Christopher Day is a Professor of Education and a member of the Centre for Research on Educational Leadership and Management (CRELM). He is also a Professor of Educational Leadership at the University of Sydney, Australia, and Chair Professor of Education at Beijing Normal University, China. He is also an Adjunct Professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, North East Normal University, China, and a Senior Fellow of East China Normal University. He is the founding Editor-in-Chief of 'Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice' (TTTP) and a member of the Editorial Boards of The British Educational Research Journal (BERJ), Teaching and Teacher Education (TATE), and the Journal of Educational Administration (JEA). He is the founder of the longest-running 25-country international research network on successful school principalship (ISSPP). In recognition of his work internationally in the field of research on teachers and leaders, he has been awarded Honorary Doctorates from the University of Linkoping, Sweden and the Education University of Hong Kong; and the Michael Huberman Award for Excellence in Research on Teachers by the American Educational Research Association. In 2009, he was awarded a higher doctorate (D.Litt) by the University of Nottingham and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and Academy of Social Sciences.

Professor Qing Gu is Director of the UCL Centre for Educational Leadership and Professor of Leadership in Education. She is the Past Chair of the British Association of Comparative and International Education (BAICE), a member of the Research Standing Committee of the World Council of Comparative Education Societies (WCCES), and a member of the Research Evidence and Impact Panel for the Leadership College for UK Government. She is a Senior Research Fellow at the Asia Pacific Centre for Leadership and Change (APCLC) and an Honorary Professor in the Department of Education Policy and Leadership at the Education University of Hong Kong. She has served as Editor and a member of the Editorial Board of many high-impact journals in education. She was conferred the Award of Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA) in 2016 and the Award of Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences (FAcSS) in 2022 for her contributions to social science. Professor Gu has directed and co-directed many government and research council-funded projects in the areas of teacher professional development, school improvement, and systemic reform and change. Some of her books have been translated into Chinese, Japanese, and Spanish.