Kim Yi Dionne is an associate professor of political science at UC Riverside. Her research examines health interventions, politics, and public opinion—primarily in African countries. She received her Ph.D. in political science at UCLA, where she was a Foreign Languages and Area Studies (FLAS) fellow in Kiswahili/African Studies. From 2008-2009, she was a Fulbright Scholar in Malawi. Before coming to UC Riverside, she held academic appointments at Smith College and Texas A&M University.

She is a contributing editor to The Monkey Cage, a blog on politics and political science at The Washington Post.

In 2018, Cambridge University Press published her book, Doomed Interventions: The Failure of Global Responses to AIDS in Africa. 

Rachel Beatty Riedl is a professor in Cornell University's Department of Government and Cornell Jeb E. Brooks School of Public Policy. 

Her research interests include institutional development in new democracies, local governance and decentralization, and authoritarian regime legacies in Africa.

Her newest book—From Pews to Politics: Religious Sermons and Political Participation in Africa, coauthored with Gwyneth McClendon—was published in September 2019. Authoritarian Origins of Democratic Party Systems in Africa (2014), her previous book, won the African Politics Best Book award.