Christoph Butterwegge, born in 1951, taught political science at the Institute for Comparative Educational Research and Social Sciences at the Faculty of Human Sciences at the University of Cologne until 2016. Butterwegge is a poverty researcher and a member of the Research Center for Intercultural Studies (FiSt). He has published numerous books on the topics of poverty, right-wing populism, and criticism of capitalism, most recently "Poverty in a Rich Country" (2009). Gudrun Hentges has been teaching political science, education policy, and political education at the University of Cologne since 2016. Gerd Wiegel, a political scientist, was a research associate at the University of Marburg from 1998 to 2003, worked for the Mobile Counseling Against Right-Wing Extremism in Thuringia from 2004 to 2005, and has been an advisor for the Left Party in the Bundestag on issues of right-wing extremism and antifascism since 2006.