Elisabetta Ragagnin , Ph.D. (2008) Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, is Associate Professor of Turkic and Mongolic studies in the Department of Asian and North-African Studies at the Ca' Foscari University of Venice. Her main research fields are linguistics, philology, cultural studies of Turkic and Mongolic languages and peoples, as well as Silk Road Studies, with special focus on Marco Polo. Her publications include the monograph Dukhan, a Turkic Variety of Northern Mongolia: Description and Analysis (Harrassowitz, 2011), the only existing grammar of this severely endangered linguistic variety. Bayarma Khabtagaeva , Ph.D., habil.

(University of Naples "L'Orientale") specializes in historical linguistics, Altaic Studies, internal and external linguistic contacts of Altaic (Turkic, Mongolic and Tungusic) languages. Her monographs include Mongolic elements in Tuvan (Harrassowitz, 2009), The Ewenki Dialects of Buryatia and their Relationship to Khamnigan Mongol (Harrassowitz, 2017) and Language Contact in Siberia: Turkic, Mongolic, and Tungusic Loanwords in Yeniseian (Brill, 2019).