Experts on countries of origin by surname

Historian, specialised in the history, politics and cultures of Iran and the Kurds.

The Expert is an Assistant Professor at the School of International Service at American University who provides testimony regularly on country conditions in the Horn of Africa. She is a medical anthropologist, gender specialist, and migration specialist with expertise in Ethiopia, Somalia, Djibouti, and Haiti.

The Expert is a Sub-Saharan Africa specialist with extensive experience in Country Operations Management, Resource Mobilization, Business Development, Communications and Advocacy across multiple countries with leading international NGOs.

Dr. Grace Cheng is the Founding Director of the Center for Human Rights in the College of Arts and Letters at San Diego State University, where she also teaches courses on human rights, political violence, and the politics of resistance at SDSU.  Dr. Cheng's writings and research interests concern questions of human rights, self-determination, and sovereignty, as well as migration and displacement.  She was a Fulbright Specialist (2018-2023), involving a project at the Centre for Human Rights, Multiculturalism and Migration, University of Jember in Indonesia and is involved in scholar-practitioner projects to integrate human rights principles and redress for past abuses in efforts to re-establish peace, including as a member of the Board of Advisors of the West African Transitional Justice Centre (Nigeria) and Advisor to the International Institute for Peace and Development Studies (Thailand).

Julie Chernov Hwang is an associate professor of political science and international relations at Goucher College and a Senior Research Fellow at the Soufan Center. She is a recipient of the Harry Frank Guggenheim Distinguished Scholar Award (2023-2024) for which she will examine the role of social networks and strong social ties in terror cell construction. She is an expert on terrorist behavior in Southeast Asia—from motivations for joining extremist groups, to the pathways into such groups, to commitment, role assignment, disengagement, reintegration, and deradicalization.  She is the author of Becoming Jihadis: Radicalization and Commitment in Southeast Asia (Oxford University Press, 2023); Why Terrorists Quit: The Disengagement of Indonesian Jihadists (Cornell University Press, 2018); Peaceful Islamist Mobilization in the Muslim World: What Went Right, (Palgrave Press, 2009); and the co-editor of Islamist Parties and Political Normalization in the Muslim World (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014).  Her articles have been published in Political Psychology, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, Terrorism and Political Violence, Asian Survey, Asian Security, Contemporary Southeast Asia, Soufan Center IntelBriefs, Asia-Pacific Issues, Southeast Asia Research,… Read more

Igor Cherstich holds a PhD in Social Anthropology from SOAS.  Fluent in Arabic he has conducted extensive ethnographic research in Libya, focusing on Tribalism, Sufism, Salafism, pre and post-Qaddafi politics, Immigration. He has been consulted as expert on Libyan affairs by Universities (University of Leiden – Van Vollenhoven Institute), Press Agencies (Agence France Press- AFP), Organisations (Human Rights Watch), Newspapers (Corriere della Sera), Radio (Radio Svizzera), and Television (ABC Australia, Channel Four).He has authored a series of expert reports dealing with Libyan asylum seekers.  

The Expert is an adjunct assistant professor of anthropology at Zayed University, Abu Dhabi, UAE. He received his PhD in anthropology from Boston University in 2015. His ethnographic fieldwork research was carried out in Afghanistan from 2009 until 2013, and again in 2016, and focused on the psychological impact of cultural norms of masculinity among Pashtun men. In 2020,

The Expert published a book based on this research, entitled Crafting Masculine Selves: Culture, War and Psychodynamics in Afghanistan (Oxford University Press, 2020), which won the 2021 Boyer Prize for contributions to psychoanalytic anthropology, from the Society for Psychological Anthropology. Additionally, he published several articles and book chapters in peer-reviewed academic journals and edited volumes on conflict, violence, and gender relations in Afghanistan. Since 2016, The Expert has been carrying out original ethnographic research in Greece, investigating the psychological impact of the migratory experience among Afghan refugees in the country.

A UK trained Barrister and a practicing lawyer working in the Supreme Court of Bangladesh. An avid political enthusiast and human rights activist with the history of academic teaching and research. Very updated with the prevailing human rights condition, political parties and political situation and judicial administration of Bangladesh and regularly providing expert opinion on these issues.

Specialist in political oppression, human rights, Expanding Communal Riot, Rule of Law, Freedom of Speech and Government Rulings, and Security and Justice with a particular expertise on social/ethnic/political groups at risk of persecution in Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Myanmar. Experience in writing legal grounds and producing expert reports for asylum cases, persecution, gender inequality, Religious Extremists and vulnerable condition of women and children, etc

Expertise in the Laws of Immigration, Right of Immigrant, Human Rights under the purview of various Social and Political aspects of Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Myanmar.

The Expert is a psychoanalytical anthropologist of violent ethnic & cultural conflict in Eurasia, South Asia, Middle East, Central and South America, West Africa, North Africa and the Horn of Africa with experience working in military, diplomatic, and humanitarian interventions in intra-state violent conflicts.

Cintia Cruz has extensive research experience, including one and a half years at the Gender and Race Department at UC Berkeley. They earned a PhD in Gender and Women’s Studies at the Federal University of Bahia, Brazil. Their thesis, defended in 2019, “Trails of Black Women,” centered on the comparative self-esteem of Black women in Oakland, California, and Salvador, Brazil. After receiving their doctorate, they served at the United Nations: Joint Program on the Eradication of Child Marriage and Early Unions in Latin America and the Caribbean (2021); The Project to Prevent Pregnancy among Teenagers at the Triple Border, Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay (2019). 

Dr. Cruz became broadly familiar with the numerous and varying structural impediments and cultural practices constraining girls’ mainly black and Indigenous, in the region. They hold a Master’s degree in Social Sciences and gather an academic trajectory strongly defined by the alignment of project management and research wo to enhance marginalized communities’ autonomy. In 2022, as a national consultant for UNICEF, they delivered the Brazilian report to the Summit Education at the United Nations General Assembly 2022, entitled The Map of Hope to Transform Education in Brazil. In 2020, Dr. Cruz was the… Read more