Sarah J. Scott is Professor of Art History and Director of the Arts Administration Program at Wagner College. Her scholarship focuses on both small objects such as cylinder seals (Seals and Sealing in the Ancient World: Case Studies from the Near East, Egypt, the Aegean, and South Asia, Cambridge University Press, 2018) and monumental architecture and narrative ("Imagining Architectural Space: Methodological Approaches for Assyrian Palaces," in How Do We Want the Past to Be? On Methods and Instruments of Visualizing the Ancient Reality, Gorgias Press, 2016).

Oya Topçuölu is Associate Professor of Instruction in the Middle East and North African Languages Program at Northwestern University. She is an archaeologist, who specializes in the art, archaeology, and history of ancient Iraq, Syria, and Turkey. Her research addresses issues of social identity and cultural exchange and the effects of political change and ideology on seals, seal imagery, and sealing practices in the second millennium bce. Additionally, she studies the looting and illegal trafficking of antiquities from Iraq and Syria, the political uses of the ancient past, and its role in the formation of national identities in the modern Middle East.