Nancy Cushing is Associate Professor in History at the University of Newcastle, Australia where she works on unceded Awabakal land. An environmental historian whose interests range from coal mining to human-other animal relations, she was co-editor of Animals Count: How Population Size Matters in Animal-Human Relations (Routledge 2018), author of A History of Crime in Australia (Routledge 2023) and A New History of Australia in 15 Animals (Bloomsbury forthcoming 2026). Her next project is a study of university campuses as ecological spaces.

Kevin Markwell is an adjunct professor at Southern Cross University, Lismore, NSW, Australia. His research into human-other animal relations has drawn largely from social constructionism and cultural analysis to explore the ways by which certain animals and animal groups have been understood and experienced by humans. His research includes studies on reptiles generally and specifically the coastal taipan and estuarine crocodile as well as the koala and the Tasmanian devil.