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Ivan Illich was born in Vienna to a Croatian father and Sephardic-Jewish mother, and had as native languages Italian, French and German. He later learnt Serbo-Croatian, the language of his grand-fathers, then Ancient Greek and Latin, as well as Spanish, Portuguese and Hindi. Thereafter, he studied histology and crystallography at the University of Florence (Italy), theology and philosophy at the Pontifical Gregorian University in the Vatican (1942-1946) and medieval history in Salzburg. He is the author of Tools for Conviviality, The Right to Useful Unemployment, Energy and Equity, Limits to Medicine, Shadow Work, Gender, H2O and the Waters of Forgetfulness, ABC: The Alphabetization of the Popular Mind, Deschooling Society and In the Mirror of the Past: Lectures and Addresses 1978-1990. Illich lived much of his life in Mexico and the United States, he died in 2002.

Barry Sanders is a Medieval scholar and literary critic. He is the author of fourteen books and over fifty essays and articles. His projects occur increasingly at the intersection of art and activism, and include The Green Zone: The Environmental Costs of Militarism. Sanders has had an extensive academic career and was the first to occupy the Gold Chair at Pitzer College, where he taught the history of ideas and medieval church iconography among other things. Along with Anne-Marie Oliver, he founded and chaired the MA in Critical Theory and Creative Research Program at the Hallie Ford School of Graduate Studies, Pacific Northwest College of Art. He is the Founding Executive Co-Director of the Oregon Institute for Creative Research with Anne-Marie Oliver.