Jaffer Sheyholislami is a Professor in the School of Linguistics and Language Studies at Carleton University, Canada. His research spans applied linguistics, discourse studies, sociolinguistics, and language policy and planning, with a focus on Kurdish contexts. He authored Kurdish Identity, Discourse, and New Media (2011) and co-edited the first English-language volume on Kurdish sociolinguistics, International Journal of the Sociology of Language, no. 217 (2012). His work appears in leading journals and handbooks, and has been translated into Arabic, Kurdish varieties, Persian, and Turkish. He is a regular contributor to Kurdish publications and conferences. Geoffrey Haig was Professor of Linguistics at the Institute for Oriental Studies, University of Bamberg, until his retirement in 2024. His research combines a regional focus on the languages of Middle East, in particular Kurdish, with theoretical interests in historical linguistics, areal linguistics, language documentation, and spoken-language based approaches to language typology.
He has authored and co-edited ten books and numerous articles as well as co-compiling major online-accessible digital resources for language typology. Haidar Khezri is Associate Professor in the Department of Modern Languages & Literatures and an Affiliated Faculty Member of the School of Politics, Security & International Affairs' Kurdish Political Studies Program at the University of Central Florida in Orlando. His research and critical inquiry centre on Middle Eastern comparative literature and postcolonial studies, with a particular emphasis on the Kurdish context. He is the author of Central Kurdish: An Elementary Textbook (2023); It Is Only Sound That Remains (2016); and Comparative Literature in Iran and the Arab World, 1903-2012 (2013). Salih Akin is a Professor of Linguistics at the University of Rouen-Normandy and Deputy Director of the Dylis Research Center. Former Head of the Department of Linguistics (2013-2016), he also serves as Editor-in-Chief of the journal Études kurdes. His research focuses on sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, and onomastics, with particular attention to the Kurdish language and its evolution, standardization, and its linguistic vitality in contexts of language contact both in the diaspora and in Kurdistan. He is the author of Noms et re-noms : la dénomination des personnes, des populations, des langues et des territoires (1999); Lêkolînên Zimannasiya Kurdî (2013), Introduction à la linguistique kurde (2023).
He also co-edited Linguistic and Cultural Diversity in Central Anatolia (2024). Ergin Öpengin is an Affiliated Researcher at the Department of Middle Eastern Studies of the University of Cambridge and a Senior Lecturer at the English Language Department of the University of Kurdistan-Hewlêr. He specializes in the structural and sociolinguistic study of Kurdish and the edition of historical Kurdish texts. He co-established the International Conference on Kurdish Linguistics (2012) and served as Associate Editor of the Kurdish Studies Journal (2015-2025). He has authored The Mukri Variety of Central Kurdish (2016), co-edited three volumes, and published a number of articles on various aspects of Kurdish and Iranian languages.