Katherine Matsuura received her MA in Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and MA in East Asian Studies from Duke University. Katherine will soon complete her doctorate in History at Yale University. Her dissertation uses the Shiwaku Islands of the Seto Inland Sea to study former pirates and nomadic fisher communities. Through the lens of these people, she examines maritime networks, commerce, and infrastructure, as well as the intersection of the ocean with local, regional, and national narratives of Japanese history from the 1600s into the 20th century.

Kuniko Yamada McVey has participated in creating the bibliography for the Constitutional Revision Research Project. She has been a librarian at the Harvard-Yenching Library since 1999 after 10 years in the Documentation Center on Contemporary Japan. At these two Harvard libraries she has developed Japanese studies resources in Harvard comprehensively, and has served numerous researchers on Japan.