Adrian Smith is Professor of Human Geography and Head of Department at Queen Mary, University of London. He works on the economic and social geographies of transformation from state socialism in East-Central Europe, with a particular focus on industrial and regional change and on community and household economies. This research has involved a number of externally-funded research projects including ESRC, Nuffield, and US National Science Foundation. Alison Stenning is Reader in the School of Geography, Politics and Sociology at Newcastle University. She has worked on the economic and social geographies of post-socialism for more than 15 years, focusing particularly on issues of work, class, gender and community. She has published two edited books and more than 40 book chapters and articles in this field, based on research funded by, amongst others, the ESRC and the Nuffield Foundation. Alena Rochovská is a Lecturer at Comenius University in Bratislava. Previously she worked as a Research Fellow at Queen Mary, University of London on the ESRC-funded project on ‘Social Exclusion, Spaces of Household Economic Practice and Post-Socialism’. She has published widely on the feminisation of poverty, feminist geography, and the geographies of social inequality in Slovakia. Dariusz Świątek is a researcher at the Institute of Geography and Spatial Organisation of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw. He previously worked as a Research Fellow at the University of Newcastle on the ESRC-funded project on ‘Social Exclusion, Spaces of Household Economic Practice and Post-Socialism’. Swiatek has published widely on unemployment problems, housing market changes and the development of suburban areas in Poland.