Experts on countries of origin by surname

Dr. Emma Varley is an Associate Professor and Chair of Anthropology at Brandon University whose research spans over two decades in sociocultural and critical medical anthropology. Her work foregrounds the cultural, ethical, and political dimensions of medicine and public health, with particular expertise in maternal and neonatal health in contexts marked by conflict, weak governance, and structural violence. Her long-term ethnographic research focuses primarily on Pakistan and India, where she has examined how state policies, sectarian dynamics, and institutional practices shape obstetric care, health service delivery, and the lived experiences of women, families, and healthcare providers.

Dr. Varley’s scholarship integrates rigorous ethnographic methods with critical theory to explore power, exclusion, and embodiment in medical and humanitarian settings. Her publications address the impacts of political strife, natural disaster, health system mismanagement, and social marginalization on maternal health outcomes, advancing broader debates in global health, gender studies, conflict studies, and the anthropology of medicine.

Dr. Hanna Vasilevich is a researcher and academic currently based at the International Centre for Ethnic and Linguistic Diversity Studies in Prague, where she serves as Board Chair. Dr. Vasilevich has been a Visiting Research Fellow at Queen’s University Belfast, UK, and a Visiting Research Fellow at the Law & Anthropology Department of the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle/Saale, Germany. Before she worked at the European Centre for Minority Studies (Germany) and taught in a number of Universities in Czechia and Germany. 

Matthew Venker is a legal anthropologist studying race, citizenship, and migration in Burma (Myanmar) and among the Burmese diaspora. He uses historic, ethnographic, and visual studies methods to understand intersectional experiences of law and litigation. His current research focuses on the experience of irregular migrants leaving Burma in the wake of the nation's 2021 military coup. He has published on the racial and gendered legacies of colonial litigation, particularly among ethnic Chinese in Burma.

Matthew has fifteen years' experience working in East and Southeast Asia, including China, Thailand, and Myanmar. He has conducted research in Myanmar since 2017. He earned his Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2023.