Tom came to Rome on a Fulbright Fellowship in 1991 after completing his architectural studies at Harvard. Tom was the founder of Scala Reale, an association of scholars leading small-group study walks that was acquired by Context in 2004. Currently Tom is dedicating himself to the fields of cultural and environmental sustainability, architecture and design through his teaching and his design firm TRA_20. He is the author of the book Rome Works: An Architect Explores the World’s Most Resilient City, and the editor of the Still Sustainable City blog sustainablerome.net which was chosen by Guardian Cities as Italy's best city blog.

Originally from England, Richard has lived in Rome for the last fourteen years. He holds a Master's degree in medieval and twentieth-century history from London University and has a broad-minded and synthetic approach to understanding Rome. Richard works quite frequently with institutional travel organizations, such as museums and church organizations, and as a result spends much of his time traveling all over Europe. He brings this cosmopolitan and pan-European experience to bear on his work with us in Rome, constantly making connections to other cities and countries in the course of his lectures and seminars.

Janet has lived between Rome and U.S.A. while working on her dissertation for Columbia University on photography in Italy under Fascism. Before that, she worked as an editor for an arts publication in Chicago. She is a painter and has taught drawing and painting in art schools and art departments in the Boston area. Her specialization in Modern Italy addresses the effects on Italians of living with history while defining themselves as modern so she has become familiar with Rome's many pasts and their expression through art and architecture. She is now based in Rome where, among other things, she sings in a Gospel Choir.