Marcello Garzaniti (Cesecom Scientific Director) full professor at University of Florence, Dipartimento di Linguistica. Since 1987: Collaborator with the Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana (Treccani) as specialist of Eastern European civilisation. Since 2006: Executive director of the series "Biblioteca di Studi slavistici" (Firenze University Press). Since 2009 President of the Italian Association of Slavists. Current researches: Bible text tradition; emigration, travels and pilgrimage from the slavic world; relationships between culture, religion, and politics in Russia and in slavic countries.

Lorenzo Pubblici (Cesecom Director) is professor at Sarah Lawrence College, Florence Program as well as at Santa Reparata International School of Art. He is an active collaborator with Reti Medievali and SISMEL- Società Internazionale di Studi sul Medioevo Latino (International Society of Latin Medieval Studies). He was a scholar at the University of Moscow "Lomonosov", Columbia University (NY) and the Summer School on Religions. He is the author of various books, essays and articles on subjects such as Eurasian nomadic cultures, the interaction between the nomadic model of society and those of the sedentary societies of the western world, and on the formation of the nomadic societies in west central Asia from Late Antiquity to the Medieval era.