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The Institut du Monde Arabe is an organisation founded in Paris in 1980 by France with 18 Arab countries to research and disseminate information about the Arab world and its cultural and spiritual values. The Institute was established as a result of a perceived lack of representation for the Arab world in France, and seeks to provide a secular location for the promotion of Arab civilization, art, knowledge, and aesthetics. Housed within the institution are a museum, library, auditorium, restaurant, offices and meeting rooms.

The history of the Fondazione Roma originates in 1539 from the birth of the Monte di Pietà of Rome. In 1836, on the initiative of deserving citizens, saw the rise of the Cassa di Risparmio. In 2007 the Cassa di Risparmio di Roma Foundation changed its name to Fondazione Roma, with the aim of highlighting its philanthropic aims. The Art Collection of the Rome Foundation is made up of a large and original corpus of works ranging from the fifteenth century to the present day. Based on a modest original nucleus coming from the collections of the Monte di Pietà and the Cassa di Risparmio di Roma, it has been significantly increased over the years with a purchasing campaign aimed at collecting and making the works accessible in a permanent exhibition space, specifically created at Palazzo Sciarra.

Richard Pankhurst (1927-2017), was a historian and founding member of the Institute of Ethiopic Studies. Pankhurst’s mother was the suffragette and anti-fascist Sylvia Pankhurst and his grandparents were Emmeline and Richard Pankhurst. It was through his mother’s protests concerning the Italian invasion of Ethiopia that he first became interested in the country. Growing up he met many Ethiopian refugees in London. Pankhurst studied economic history at the London School of Economics and in 1956 he went to Ethiopia to teach at the University College of Addis Ababa, subsequently becoming the founder and director of the Institute of Ethiopic Studies.

In 1976, after the death of Haile Selassie and the start of the Ethiopian Civil War, Pankhurst returned to England, teaching at SOAS and LSE but, in 1978, he became the Librarian at the Royal Asiatic Society, a position he kept for several years before returning to Ethiopia in 1987 and resuming his work at the Institute. He published numerous books and articles on a wide variety of topics related to Ethiopian history.

Pankhurst led the campaign for the return of the Obelisk of Axum to Ethiopia. It was re-erected in Axum in 2008. He was given an OBE in the Diplomatic Service and Overseas section of the 2004 Queen's Birthday Honours. He was married to Rita (née Eldon) Pankhurst and had two children, Helen and Alula.

John Owen Hunwick was a British academic, author, and Africanist. He published several books, articles and journals in the African Studies field. He was professor emeritus at Northwestern University, having retired in 2004 after 23 years of service. Hunwick died in Skokie, Illinois on 1 April 2015, at the age of 79.

W.A.J. Semerjibashian was a judge working in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. He was the author of Lij Eyasu and Haile Sellassie: Winnowing out the Myth published by Red Sea Press, U.S.A. in 1997 and also wrote on the Armenian community in Ethiopia. He was in Addis Ababa in 1946 but by 1983 was living in Kreuzlingen, Switzerland.