Godfrey Baldacchino is Professor of Sociology at the University of Malta. He has various publications related to labour studies, industrial relations and human resource management, including at least four books: Evolving Industrial Relations in Malta (with S. Rizzo & E. Zammit, 2003); Managing People in Malta (with A. Caruana & M. Grixti, 2003), Malta and its Human Resources (with V. Cassar & J. Azzopardi, 2018) and Working Life: The Transformation of Malta: 1960-2020 (with M. Debono, 2021).
Edward Zammit is professor emeritus of industrial sociology at the University of Malta, specialising in industrial relations and human resources. He pursued his studies at the Universities of Malta, Chicago’s Loyola (USA) and Oxford (UK) -obtaining his D.Phil in 1979. He has lectured as a visiting professor in other universities, including Germany, Holland and the USA. He has published a number of books and articles in academic journals on his special field of studies namely, human resources, industrial relations, co-operatives, social dialogue, workers’ and trade union education, and the future of work and leisure. In addition to Malta, he has carried out and was involved in research projects in the former Yugoslavia, France, Spain, Sweden, and the UK.
At the University of Malta, he was responsible for setting up a number of academic departments - including the Centre for Labour Studies (originally known as the Workers’ Participation Development Centre). Additionally, he was Board Member of the Bank of Valletta, the Malta Statistics’ Authority, the Foundation for Human Resources Development, Deputy Chairman of the Employment and Training Corporation, Chairman of the central Cooperatives’ Board and, for many years, the ‘independent chairman’ of the statutory, tripartite Employment Relations Board. In 2022, in recognition of his achievements, he was awarded Membership of the National Order of Merit.
John Chircop is resident professor in economic and social history at the Department of History and chairperson of the Mediterranean Institute. He obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Essex in 1997 with a thesis on ‘The British Imperial Network in the Mediterranean 1800-1870. A Study of Regional Fragmentation and Imperial Integration’. Early in his doctoral studies he was awarded a Wingate Scholarship from the Hyam Wingate Foundation, London.
Most of Chircop’s published research is in the comparative social-economic history of the wider Central Mediterranean, mostly converging on British colonial territories in the region. His main research projects focus on poor relief, welfare and public health, colonial/postcolonial labour regimes and migration during the long nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth centuries. Mediterranean historiography and the history of labour, workers’ resistance and organisation are two other stems of his research and publication. He is also involved in the study of Public Memory and Oral history, being the founder of the Public Memory Archive and now spearheading the setting up of Memorja: The Oral, Sound and Visual Archives at the National Archives.
His publications include Mediterranean Quarantines. Space, Power and Identity, 1780-1914, co-edit with F.J. Martinez (Manchester University Press, 2019); Colonial Encounters; Maltese experiences of British Rule 1800 -1970s (Horizons, 2015); Labour History Revisited (Horizons, 2013); Vulnerability, Social Inequality and Health (with Patrice Bourdelais, Lisbon, 2010); The Left within the Maltese Labour Movement (Mireva, 1994).
