Crain Soudien was educated in the fields of education and African Studies at the Universities of Cape Town, South Africa and the State University of New York at Buffalo. His PhD dissertation from Buffalo was on South African youth identity. He is a former deputy vice-chancellor of the University of Cape Town, where he remains an emeritus professor in Education and African Studies. He is also the former Chief Executive Officer of the Human Sciences Research Council. He has honorary professorial appointments at Nelson Mandela University and the Cape University of Technology. He is the President (honorary) of Cornerstone Institute. His publications in the areas of social difference, culture, education policy, comparative education, educational change, public history and popular culture include four books, one co-authored book, six edited collections and over 240 articles, reviews, reports, and book chapters. He has an A-rating in the South African research system. He is involved in a number of local, national and international social and cultural organisations, and is chairperson of the Independent Examinations Board, a founder and former chairperson of the District Six Museum Foundation, a former president of the World Council of Comparative Education Societies, and has served as the chair of three Ministerial Committees of Inquiry, including the Ministerial Committee on Transformation in Higher Education and the Ministerial Committee to Evaluate Textbooks for Discrimination.

He is a fellow of the International Academy of Education, the African Academy of Science, a Senior Fellow of NORRAG, Geneva Graduate Institute, a member of the Academy of Science of South Africa, a former fellow of the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Studies, the SARCHI Chair in Development Education, UNISA and the Centre for Global Citizenship Education and Research, University of Alberta in Canada. He serves on the boards of a number of cultural, heritage, education and civil society structures.

Michael Cross passed away in 2021. He began his career as a lecturer at the Faculty of Education, University of the Witwatersrand in 1986 where he also earned MEd (1986) and PhD (1994) degrees. He was, at the time of his passing, a Research-focused Professor in Higher Education at the University of Johannesburg. He was also a visiting scholar at Stanford University, Stockholm University and Jules-Vernes University in Amiens.

As a result of his extensive outreach work on the African continent, he was the Winner of the 2011–2012 award as Outstanding Mentor of Educational Researchers in Africa from the Association for Educational Development in Africa (ADEA). He was also awarded teaching and research fellowships at several institutions, including Johns Hopkins University and Northwestern University. Professor Cross was the author and co-author of several books, book chapters and numerous articles in leading scholarly journals. His books include Imagery of Identity in South African Education, 1880–1990 (Durham, Carolina Academic Press, 1999), No Easy Road: Transforming Higher Education in South Africa (Pretoria: Longman, 1998) and Unfulfilled Promise – Changing Schools in Mozambique (Addis Ababa:
OSSREA, 2011). Apart from his contribution as an education specialist for several major national education policy initiatives in South Africa, such as the National Commission on Higher Education and the Technical Committee on Norms and Standards for Educators, he also served as a member of education evaluation teams in Africa, Europe and USA.