Madina Pashtova (b. 1971, Cherkessk) is a philologist, folklorist, guest lecturer in the Department of Circassian Language and Culture of the University of Erciyes University (Kayseri, Türkiye), and editor of the volume Adyghe in the series Peoples and Cultures (Miklukho-Maklai Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology, Russian Academy of Sciences, 2022). In 2022, she defended her doctoral dissertation on Folklore of the Circassian Diaspora: Localization of Tradition, Functionality of Texts at the Gorky Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences. She is the author of over 80 scholarly works, including the monographs Adyghe National Lyric Poetry: Traditional Non-Ritual Genres (2009) and The Folklore of the Circassian Diaspora: Local Tradition and Its Bearer (2020). She is a member of the editorial board of scholarly journals published in Russia and Turkey.
Vitaly Shtybin (b. 1986, Belorechensk, Krasnodarsky Krai) is a historian, socio-cultural anthropologist, and Caucasus specialist who has a master’s degree in history from Kuban State University and is a doctoral candidate at the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Since 2017 he has run the YouTube channel Etnografika, which explores the history and culture of the peoples of the North-West Caucasus. He is the author of the book Dances, Mountains, and Chestnut Honey about the culture and history of the Circassian (Adyghe) people.
Lilit Matevosyan (b. 1989, Tbilisi) is an artist and photographer and founder of the self-organization Aerarii (Sochi). She graduated from Fotografika Academy of Documentary and Art Photography (St. Petersburg, 2017) and Krasnodar Institute of Contemporary Culture (2020). She is the recipient of a grant from Garage Museum of Contemporary Art (Moscow, 2022).
