Alfonso Berardinelli, essayist and literary critic, is former Professor of Contemporary Literature at Ca’ Foscari University in Venice. He is the author of numerous publications, including L’eroe che pensa. Disavventure dell'impegno (Einaudi, 1997); Autoritratto italiano (Donzelli, 1998); La forma del saggio (Marsilio, 2002, winner of the Viareggio Prize); and Casi critici. Dal postmoderno alla mutazione (Quidlibet, 2007).

Luca Codignola is Professor of History of Canada at the University of Genova and Director of CNR's Institute of History of Mediterranean Europe.

Bruce Cole is the eighth Chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities. He came to the Endowment in December 2001 from Indiana University in Bloomington, where he was Distinguished Professor of Art History and Professor of Comparative Literature. He earned his master’s degree from Oberlin College and his doctorate from Bryn Mawr College. He is a corresponding member of the Academia Senese degli Intronati and a founder and former co-president of the Association for Art History. He has written fourteen books, many of them about the Renaissance.

Massimo Cultrano is a Ph.D. archaeologist and researcher with the Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR), Istituto per i Beni Archeologici e Monumentali, Catania (IBAM). He is Assistant Professor of Aegean Prehisotry at the University of Palermo. In 2001, he was Visiting Professor at Brown University, and he is a member of the Archaeological Institute of America. He is scientific directgor of the Iraq Virtual Museum, a project funded by the CNR and the Italian Ministry for Foreign Affairs.

Massimo de Leonardis is a Professor of History of International Relations and Institutions and of History of Treaties and International Politics at the Catholic University of Milan, where he is also Director of the Department of Political Science. He also teaches contemporary history at the European University of Rome.

Pietro De Marco, a philosopher and a history of religions scholar, is Professor at the Faculty of Education Sciences at Florence University, where he teaches Sociology of Religion. He also teaches Sociology of Religion at the Faculty of Theology at the University of Central Italy (Florence) and Comparitive Religioius Systems at the Political Sciences Faculty of the University of Florence. He studies, in particular, the public (i.e., theological/political) aspect of religious traditions.

Roberto de Mattei is a Professor of History of Church and History of Christianity at the European University of Rome. He is Vice President of the Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (the Italian National Research Council).

Wilfred McClay has been SunTrust Bank Chair of Excellence in Humanities at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, where he is also Professor of History, since 1999. He has taught at Georgetown University, Tulane University, The Johns Hopkins University, and the University of Dallas.

Michael McDonald is the Assistant Chairman for Programs at the National Endowment for the Humanities in Washington, D.C. He received his Ph.D. in Romance Languages and Literatures from the Catholic University of America. He also holds a J.D. from the National Law Center at George Washington University and is a member of the Bar of the Supreme Court of the United States. From 1988 to 2002, McDonald was on the Board of Directors and President of the Center for Individual Rights.

Francesco Perfetti is Professor of Conemporary History and of History of International Relations at the Luiss University of Rome. He is director of the Historical Archive of the Italian Foreign Minister, and he is also director of the historical magazine, Nuova Storia Contemporanea.

Angelo Maria Petroni is Professor of Logic and Philosophy of Science at the University of Bologna. Former Director of the National School of Public Administration, he was advisor to the Treasury Minister Giulio Tremonti during the Berlusconi Government (2002–2006). He is Secretary General of the Aspen Institute Italy and a member of the executive committee of the Italian public broadcasting corporation (RAI).

Ingrid Rowland is Professor, based in Rome, at the University of Notre Dame School of Architecture. A frequent contributor to the New York Review of Books, she is the author of The Culture of the High Renaissance: Ancients and Moderns in Sixteenth-Century Rome (1998), The Scarith of Scornello: A Tale of Renaissance Forgery (2004), and From Heaven to Arcadia (2005).